


Tattooed

by mnwood



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: (very minor wg at the very end), Action & Romance, Alien Gender/Sexuality, Alien Sex, Anxiety, Anxiety Disorder, Bisexual Eddie Brock, Blow Jobs, Body Horror, Body Modification, Body Worship, Casual Sex, Cuddling & Snuggling, Eddie Brock Needs A Hug, Eddie Brock/Venom Symbiote in Love, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Venom Symbiote (Marvel), Gender-Neutral Venom Symbiote (Marvel), Human Disaster Eddie Brock, Hurt Eddie Brock, Hurt Venom Symbiote (Marvel), Hurt/Comfort, Interspecies Relationship(s), Interspecies Sex, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Marvel Universe, Minor Dan Lewis/Anne Weying, Multi, Near Death Experiences, POV Eddie Brock, Plotty, Police Brutality, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Possessive Venom Symbiote (Marvel), Post-Canon, Protests, Rope Bondage, Sharing a Body, Sub Eddie Brock, Tattoos, Tentacles, Trans Female Character, Venom Symbiote (Marvel) Eats People, Venom Symbiote Loves Eddie Brock, Venom Symbiote Takes Care of Eddie Brock, Violence, Vore, Weight Gain, alien vore, light body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:02:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 74,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24688834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mnwood/pseuds/mnwood
Summary: Trying to adjust to sharing bodies with an alien, Eddie Brock makes changes to his personal life. When a date with an old lover goes very wrong very quickly, Eddie and Venom find themselves in trouble with the law and unable to properly deal with the consequences of their actions. Eddie self-sabotages and gets way in over his head with the San Francisco Police Department. Eddie and Venom work together to help save themselves and the people they love, but they are two halves of a whole idiot.Or: Venom says ACAB.
Relationships: Eddie Brock/Anne Weying, Eddie Brock/Other(s), Eddie Brock/Venom Symbiote, Eddie Brock/Venom Symbiote/Anne Weying
Comments: 235
Kudos: 534
Collections: You haven’t lived if you haven’t read this





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie has a lot of tattoos. Venom likes them but doesn't quite understand what they are. Eddie makes an appointment to get a new one.

**_Eddie._ **

“Hmm.”

**_Tell me what this is._ **

Eddie shifts in bed and blinks himself awake with a groan. Venom is at his right hip, tendrils like small streams of water passing curiously over his skin. Eddie used to wear pajama pants and a t-shirt to bed each night, but his temperature runs hot with Venom inside him so he started wearing just a pair of gym shorts instead, and now he’s regretting it. 

“Venom. I’ve told you this. Stop waking me up for stupid shit.”

The tendrils press insistently into Eddie’s skin, which tickles a little bit. **_You slept long enough._ **

“That’s not the—what are you even doing?” Eddie props himself up on his elbows and looks down at where Venom is pressing into the tattoo on his abdomen. “Oh. It’s a, uh—I got it after I proposed to Anne. It says ‘til I die AW,’ which, you know, in hindsight, is, uh…”

A long silence passes before Venom says, **_What do you mean you “got it”?_ **

“What—what do you _mean_ what do I mean? It’s a tattoo.”

Venom spreads out over his body, crawling itself up over the tattoos on his sides, chest, arms and back. **_Are these also called “tattoos”?_ **

“Can’t you read my mind, man? You’ve been inside me for several weeks, you’ve gotta know what a goddamn tattoo is by now.”

**_That is not how it works. Explain to me what a tattoo is._ **

Eddie groans in frustration. He sits up on the side of the bed and grabs his phone from the nightstand, checking and deleting emails like he compulsively does each morning. He is going to lunch with Anne today, but other than that, his schedule is free. 

**_Eddie._ **

“Look, I’ve actually been thinking about getting another one, so, uh, maybe I’ll make an appointment and then you can see—”

**_Anne’s skin is not like this. Do only some people wear tattoos as part of their bodies?_ **

“Um, hmm. Well, yeah, only some people have them. But they’re permanent. Once you add them to your skin, they stay there.” Eddie stands up and stretches his back out before heading into the bathroom for a shower. 

He can feel Venom still exploring his tattoos, the symbiote moving its liquidy strands in such a meticulous way like it’s tracing each tableau: the wolf on his left forearm, the numbers near his right clavicle, the corvid over his left pec, and so on until Eddie is so mesmerized by the feeling that he spends several minutes in the shower just standing completely still as cold water pours over him.

Venom nudges him out of his trance, merging itself with the muscles of Eddie’s legs to get him to move and sending hunger signals to his brain.

“Hey, no taking over without my permission, how many times do I have to tell you?” Eddie says, annoyed as he awkwardly jerks his legs in a fruitless attempt to regain control. 

**_This is_ ** **our** **_body, Eddie._ **

“No. No, there’s _my_ body and there’s your body, and whichever one of us is driving is the one in control.” Eddie stops and tries to work out what he means. “That’s me most of the time, in control.”

A tickle runs through Eddie’s whole body, which means that Venom is laughing. Even so, it cedes leg muscle control back to Eddie, allowing him to get dressed before going to the kitchen.

**_I keep you alive. If I left your body, you would die very quickly._ **

“Yeah, well, so would you, so I’m not sure what your point is.”

Venom pulls part of its body out of Eddie and floats its head directly in front of his face. The first few times it did this, Eddie felt terrified and found Venom repulsive. Now, he feels a begrudging fondness for it. He thinks it probably has to do with the kiss they shared in the woods, but in general he tries not to think too hard about that.

 **_You do not know the things I do for you, Eddie,_ **Venom says, slowly.

Eddie blinks. “OK. Uh, I don’t really—don’t give me more information than that, please.”

Venom just smiles with all its teeth in response, then it turns toward the fridge and coaxes Eddie into making a heinous breakfast. 

Eddie tries to get some writing done before his lunch with Anne, but Venom is more active than usual as it continues its ministrations of his tattoos, so Eddie impulsively calls the artist he always goes to, Marie, and asks her if she can fit him in by the end of the week. She tells him he can come in later that afternoon if he wants, since she had a last-minute cancellation. Eddie has been going to her for years, so she has several of his designs ready and waiting. 

Eddie meets Anne at an Indian restaurant across town, one of their favorite date-night joints when they were still together, and the only difference now is that they don’t sit on the same side of the booth anymore. 

Anne greets Eddie with a hug and comments on how warm he feels.

“You say that every time,” Eddie replies with a small laugh as they break apart. He removes his leather jacket before taking a seat. 

“Well, you’re just always feverishly warm. I don’t know how it doesn’t bother you,” she says as she sits across from him.

“I mean, it does bother me sometimes. I only take cold showers now. And I sleep mostly naked.”

Anne raises her eyebrows at him. “Mr. I-have-to-shower-and-change-into-PJs-immediately-after-sex sleeps _naked_ now?”

He smiles at her. “Yeah, alright, I deserved that.”

A server comes by to take their drink order. Anne makes a face when Eddie orders water.

“You never drink water.”

Now he’s the one making a face. “That’s not true. I used to drink water, uh, sometimes.”

“So what else is he making you do besides drink water?”

Eddie shifts in the booth. “Nothing. He’s just, um, mostly just irritating.”

Venom rumbles and slithers uncomfortably inside Eddie, clearly angry with his assessment.

“He’s been asking me about my tattoos today. He definitely doesn’t understand what they are.”

Anne laughs. “Does that happen a lot, him not understanding something basic?”

The server returns with their drinks and asks if they are ready to order, and just as Eddie is about to say no, Anne orders for both of them. 

Eddie pouts at her.

“What?” she asks after the server walks away. “We’ve been here a million times, I know what you like.”

 **_She doesn’t know what_ ** **we** **_like._ **

“Yeah, uh, you know Vee’s appetite is a little different.” Eddie clears his throat. “Which means, um, my appetite’s a little different, too. It’s alright, I’ll just have to order more food. We eat a lot.”

“Are you sure you’re OK, Eddie?” She drops her voice to a whisper and leans across the table. “He’s not torturing you or anything, is he?”

Eddie imitates her, leaning across the table and narrowing his eyes as he says, “He’s inside me, Annie, so getting closer to me and whispering doesn’t mean he can’t hear you.”

Anne bats playfully at Eddie’s shoulder before leaning back again. “I’m just trying to make sure you’re safe, that’s all.”

Venom moves and twists its tendrils through Eddie’s body, coming closer to the surface of his skin before burrowing back down into Eddie’s muscles. It was an annoying sensation the first few times Venom did it, but now Eddie thinks of it like a cat repositioning on his lap—which, to be fair, was also annoying when Mr. Belvedere deemed Eddie worthy enough to sit on, but even so, thinking of Venom like a pet makes the alien seem like less of a nuisance. 

“Yeah, Annie, I’m safe,” Eddie responds softly. “We’re still, uh, just trying to figure out living together. It’s annoying, sometimes, but we’re working on it.”

“Is ‘living together’ the right term for it, though? You’re just... _together._ It’s kind of a big commitment, if you think about it.”

Eddie laughs and scratches the back of his head. “Yeah, which is why I don’t really think about it. But, you know, I don’t really have that much of a choice. If he leaves, I die.”

Venom moves in a way that feels like it is tightening inside Eddie, like all of its strands are taut, which Eddie’s body responds to antagonistically: he relaxes. 

“OK, so if you knew you wouldn’t die if he left, would you want him to leave?”

Venom simmers, angry.

“No,” Eddie answers honestly. “I mean, there are definitely things I would change, but…”

“You like the power.”

Eddie looks around, irrationally embarrassed that someone might overhear them. He nods shyly then takes a drink of water. 

“Oh, Eddie, you’re so predictable.”

“What?”

“You don’t like having your own power, you just like taking it from other people. Or, in this case, an alien.”

He leans back in his chair and defensively crosses his arms over his chest, tucking his hands under his armpits. “What are you talking about?”

“Your career. And now this.” She shrugs. “I just hope you sort it all out with Venom, is all. You’re irritable, like you were the first couple weeks after you moved in with me. Remember that?”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Yes, I remember because you won’t let me forget. This is different though. I’m not—um, I’m not in a relationship with Venom.”

“Aren’t you though?”

**_Yes._ **

Eddie swallows. “Not—it’s not—I can’t think of it that way, it’s too weird.”

“Yeah, probably. But it’s something you're gonna have to deal with eventually.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Eddie changes the subject after that, asking Anne about her work and about Dan. When their food arrives, Eddie immediately orders another entree and an appetizer and tries not to feel embarrassed about it. He could actually eat way more than that, but he won’t in front of Anne. Venom complains in his head, insists their bodies are still hungry, swirls its strands frantically around Eddie’s midsection to make its point, but Eddie just sets his jaw and ignores it. 

When Eddie tells Anne at the end of lunch that he has an appointment to get a tattoo, Anne just laughs and says, “Still the same old Eddie.” She pays for the meal, Eddie leaves a cash tip, and they walk out to his bike together. 

Feeling relaxed and brave, Eddie gives Anne a kiss on the temple as they hug goodbye. She doesn’t acknowledge it. 

On the drive over to the tattoo shop, Venom asks, **_How long will it take to win her back?_ **

Eddie hates when Venom talks to him when he’s driving because although Venom can hear his voice no matter what volume he speaks, he can’t hear _himself_ over the sound of the engine and the wind. “I told you, it’s not happening.”

**_But we like her._ **

“I know we like her, but she’s with Dan and you and I are, uh, kind of fucked up.”

**_I don’t understand._ **

Eddie sighs. “Anne’s right. Like it or not, you and I are together—a package deal, so the chances of me having any kind of human relationship with anyone is just out of the question.” Realizing how depressing that is, Eddie tacks on, "Right now."

**_But Anne likes us. I think she would like being with both of us._ **

Eddie doesn’t respond. Surprisingly, Venom doesn’t push the issue.

At the tattoo shop, Eddie is greeted by one of the artists, Solomon, with little more than a curt nod and a waiver slapped down on the counter, which Eddie signs without reading. He then takes a seat out front to wait for Marie.

**_Your pulse has quickened. You’re beginning to sweat._ **

“Yeah, well, that’s because the guy that just helped us is my ex, and it did not end well,” Eddie whispers through gritted teeth.

**_Oh, like Anne?_ **

“Stop playing dumb, you know what an ex is.”

Eddie watches as Sol greets another client. Despite having dated nearly a decade ago when Eddie was only in San Francisco for a six-month temporary gig, Sol still acts like it was just yesterday that Eddie chickened out on their relationship and told him he had to get back to his “real life” in New York. Not his best choice of words. 

Sol looks bigger every time Eddie comes to the shop. He is older than Eddie, has to be in his 50s by now, but he clearly still lifts as evidenced by the broad muscles of his back and the thickness of his tattooed biceps. His muscled chest tapers into a soft torso, his belly significantly more pronounced than when they dated. His beard looks thicker, too, a few fuzzy gray hairs mixed in with the black, and he is bald—has always been bald—and richly dark-skinned and six inches taller than Eddie.

**_You are still attracted to him._ **

Eddie clenches his fist against his thigh. “He’s still attractive.”

**_You are attracted to Anne, too. But Solomon looks very different from Anne._ **

“I don’t know if now is the best time for me to explain race and gender and sexuality to you.”

**_Anne is small, so I assumed you preferred someone smaller than you. But Solomon is—_**

Eddie ignores the rest of Venom’s sentence as Marie comes out of the back office and waves Eddie over to her workstation. Marie is rail thin and only ever wears baggy tank tops and baggy ripped jeans, and nearly every inch of visible skin is covered in colorful tattoos. 

“Did you pierce more of your face since the last time I was here?” Eddie teases as he takes a seat.

She swivels toward him on her stool. She has piercings everywhere: eyebrows, nose, lip, tongue, all over her ears, and a barbell through her sternum. “I’m sure I have, since you haven’t been here in forever, buddy. I was wondering what the hell happened to you.”

“Yeah, uh, I’ve been going through some stuff, you know how it is.”

She pulls her long black hair up into a bun on top of her head then grabs a stack of drawings off a table as she says, “My aunt told me you ate a dude in her store.”

Venom vibrates through Eddie’s entire body.

“You know no matter how many times you tell me, I’m never gonna remember you’re Mrs. Chen’s niece.”

Marie holds out three drawings for Eddie to pick. 

“Ah fuck, they’re gorgeous, Marie,” he says as he leans forward to get a better look. He points to the one in the middle, a partial skeleton of a rib cage and pelvis held together by nuts and bolts. “Let’s put that one on my left side.”

“You got it, bud.”

As Marie prepares everything, she says casually, “So you gonna tell me about the dude you ate, or?”

“Oh right, um, I have a parasite.”

Venom constricts inside Eddie, making the muscles in his arms and legs jump.

“It’s, like, an alien,” Eddie continues lamely.

Marie’s face doesn’t change. “Take your shirt off. So, can I see it? The alien? My aunt said it’s gnarly.”

Eddie pulls at the hem of his shirt and asks, “Do I have to take it all the way off?”

“Aww, poor little Eddie doesn’t wanna expose his cute body when his ex is right over there.”

**_I like her. I’m going to say hi to her._ **

“No, Vee, wait—”

It always feels like Eddie’s face is being sucked into a vacuum when Venom takes it over. 

**_Hi, Marie. Eddie and I are Venom._ **

Marie blinks. “OK, so. I think I understand why you ate a guy.”

Venom sticks its tongue out then relinquishes control back to Eddie.

“Goddamn it, I hate when he does that shit,” Eddie says with a nervous laugh, looking around the shop to make sure nobody noticed anything.

“You, like, straight up have an alien inside you, bud,” Marie says. “But for real, take your shirt off.”

Eddie complies, then turns over to his side so Marie can get started. She presses her gloved fingers against his skin and asks exactly where he wants it, how big he wants it, then she cleans the area. 

Venom stirs inside him, concentrating much of its mass in Eddie’s rib cage, where Marie is touching. **_What is she going to do to us?_ **

“You’ll see, buddy, just be patient,” Eddie replies.

“Who you talking to, Eddie? Your alien?”

“Yeah, he talks to me. Constantly.”

Marie stands. “Ooh, sounds like that’s annoying. I’ll be right back.”

**_You think I am annoying._ **

“Yeah, we’ve established that already.” Eddie flips over to his back and crosses his arms over his bare chest. He has no qualms about his body, usually, but he does not like feeling exposed around an ex. 

**_I don’t think_ ** **you** **_are annoying. I still think you’re a loser, but I like you._ **

“Can you just—can we put a lid on this until we get home, please?”

Venom’s tendrils bury deeper inside Eddie before going still, which Eddie interprets as Venom doing its best to leave him alone.

Marie returns a moment later with a stencil, and Eddie turns back to his side without having to be asked. With the stencil in place, Marie leads Eddie over to the full-length mirror.

As Eddie looks at himself to make sure he likes the placement, he spots Sol in the mirror, managing equipment at his own workstation across the room and stealing a glance at Eddie. Eddie flushes, but not with embarrassment. More like pride. 

**_We can eat him if you’d like._ **

“No, Vee, we really can’t.”

**_He is looking at us. Do you think he still wants to be with you, Eddie?_ **

“Why are you so nosy? Seriously?” To Marie, he says, “Looks perfect. Sorry I’m talking to myself.”

“What’s he talking to you about?” Marie asks as they walk back to her workstation. 

“Sol.”

“Oh, that’s awkward.” Marie sits on her stool and puts on new gloves. “If he’s in there with you all the time, how the hell are you supposed to have any privacy?”

“I don’t.”

**_Eddie, what is that? Why does she have needles?_ **

“Calm down, buddy,” Eddie placates even as he feels Venom’s tendrils pull as taut as strings of a guitar inside his body. “This is what getting a tattoo is like, and we trust her.”

Marie laughs.

**_She is going to hurt you._ **

“It’s alright.” Eddie’s entire body is rigid. “Can you please—loosen up a bit, Vee.”

It takes a moment for Eddie’s muscles to relax.

At the sound of the tattoo machine, Venom stirs but does not constrict again. 

“You ready?” Marie asks sweetly, machine poised over Eddie’s rib cage.

“Yep.”

At the press of the needle, Venom turns to liquid inside Eddie, concentrating into a single point and numbing his side completely. 

“Hey, hey, hey, no,” Eddie says.

Marie immediately stops. “What, what’s wrong?”

“Sorry, not you. Hold on a second.” Eddie flips to his back and looks down at himself. “The pain is OK. Don’t try to heal me.”

**_But it hurts you. She’s hurting you._ **

“I _know_ that, but sometimes pain is...good. Just—hang out until she’s done.”

Marie doesn’t say anything, just waits for Eddie to give her the go ahead. She looks a little apprehensive as she presses the needle back to his skin.

After a few minutes, probably less than five, Venom swirls watery soft around Eddie’s ribs again, soothing the burned skin.

“Goddamn it, you’re doing it again.”

Marie stops. “Thank god I know about the alien, or else this would be a very strange experience for me.”

**_I don’t like feeling your body get hurt. I like your body._ **

Eddie sits up, groans, scrubs a hand down his face. “Venom. I am fine. Look at my body. This is how I got all the rest of the tattoos you love so much, by going through this pain. It’s not permanent, and it’s not even that bad. Please stop trying to fix it.”

Venom is quiet for a moment before saying, **_But why would you want to be in pain when I can fix it for you?_ **

“I _like_ this pain. I want to feel it. I’ll tell you what, if it gets to be too much, I’ll let you fix it. Deal?”

**_Fine._ **

Eddie lies back down on his side.

“My god, Eddie, what the shit?” Marie asks.

“He should be OK now, you can go ahead,” Eddie replies.

Marie clears her throat and tentatively presses the needle against Eddie’s skin. The pain is a single small point, constantly moving, burning, tickling, unlike any other type of pain imaginable. Eddie relaxes into it.

“So, the alien likes your tattoos, huh?” Marie asks after a few minutes of silence.

“Yeah. He likes pretty much everything about me.”

“Well, that sounds totally healthy and normal.”

Venom moves the bulk of itself into Eddie’s shoulders and neck and settles there. **_I can feel that you enjoy this pain. I think I understand._ **

“Anne said he and I are in a relationship,” Eddie says quietly.

“Gross, dude. He’s an alien living inside you, you can’t be in a relationship.”

“I mean, I get what you’re saying, but it’s not like I can be in a relationship with anybody else either. Kind of hard to be intimate with another human being when an alien is always talking inside my head and moving around inside my body.”

**_You don’t want to be in a relationship with anybody but Anne, though, and Anne understands us._ **

“Huh,” Marie says. “That kind of sucks, buddy.”

**_I don’t know how many times I’m going to have to tell you this today._ **

“Hmm?” 

**_We should talk to Anne._ **

“He’s talking to you now, isn’t he? You’re not listening to anything I’m saying.” Marie stops the machine and wipes the wound. “What about sex? Like, if you tried to have sex with someone, would he pop out your face and get in on the action?”

**_That might be fun. We could try that._ **

Eddie’s heart drops to his stomach. “Um, let’s not—can we not talk about that right now.”

“Oh my god, are you talking to me or to him? What did he say?” Marie asks.

“Nothing.” Eddie laughs nervously. “And I’m not discussing sex with you, Marie, you’re, like, 20 years younger than me.”

“You dork, it’s not like you’re my dad.”

**_Does sex make you uncomfortable, Eddie?_ **

Eddie buries his face in the crook of his elbow. His body wants to squirm, to escape this situation, but he has to remain perfectly still on his side. 

Venom doesn’t say anything else to him, but it spreads itself evenly across Eddie’s body and holds him in place, immediately turning Eddie’s embarrassment into a quiet calm. 

The tattoo takes another two hours for Marie to finish. It’s not very big, just about the same size as the Buddha up and to the right of it, but it is intricate and beautiful in a way that makes Eddie stare at it in the mirror for a solid minute and a half before Marie asks if he likes it or not.

“It’s gorgeous, Marie, thank you,” he says softly. 

Marie pulls out her phone and presses a hand to Eddie’s side to make him turn toward her so she can snap a picture. Venom moves swiftly against the touch, pressing through Eddie’s muscle tissue and pushing out through the surface of his skin exactly where Marie’s hand is.

“Oh geez, what’s that?” Marie asks as she snatches her hand back.

“I don’t know, he’s never done that before. Vee, what’s the deal?” Eddie touches the spot where Venom still lingers.

**_Just testing something out._ **

“OK,” Eddie says, annoyed. “You’ve got to communicate with me, buddy, you can’t just randomly touch people.”

Venom rumbles through Eddie’s entire body in a long-suffering sigh.

“Why does he want to touch me anyway?” Marie asks.

**_She’s been touching us for hours, I was curious._ **

“He was, uh, curious,” Eddie repeats. 

“About _what?”_

Venom rumbles again.

“I don’t know! I don’t know, Marie, he’s an alien.” Eddie glances around the shop and catches Sol’s eye before Sol quickly looks away. “Can we just—how much do I owe you?”

Marie doesn’t ask any other questions about Venom even though Eddie can tell she wants to, and she doesn’t say anything when he leaves her a much bigger tip than usual, but she does roll her eyes as she takes the cash. Eddie heads quickly out of the shop and is standing by his bike about to strap his helmet on when a familiar voice calls his name.

“Oh, hey, Sol,” Eddie says sheepishly, moving his helmet to his right hip and avoiding eye contact as Solomon walks up to him.

**_Stand up straight, Eddie. You look weak._ **

“Seems like Marie was giving you a hard time,” Sol replies, his voice deep and smooth. “You doing OK, Ed?”

Eddie scratches the back of his head. **_Stop fidgeting._ **“Yeah, I’m alright. You?”

“Your phone number the same?”

**_Stop moving._ **

“What?”

Sol tilts his chin down, making himself slightly more eye-level with Eddie. “I still have your number, if it’s the same. I’d like to use it.”

Eddie involuntarily laughs like an idiot. “Alright, um, yeah, it’s the same. But, uh—”

“Good. See you later, Ed,” Sol says as he walks back into the shop.

**_Why did you let him talk over you? Why didn’t you stand up taller?_ **

Eddie feels heat creeping up his neck, into his ears, as he recalls his and Sol’s relationship: there was rope sometimes, and Sol teasing Eddie about being a brat, and Sol always being the one in control even when they were out in public together, and Eddie enjoyed every bit of it. 

Although Eddie is pretty sure Venom can see his memories when they flare so vividly, he still says out loud, “I didn’t wanna stand up taller. Not with him.”

**_You are a loser._ **

“Nah, this is different,” Eddie replies as he gets on his bike. “Sometimes it’s a choice to let someone else have, uh, control. Willingly giving up your own control, you know, that kind of thing.”

**_Like willingly feeling pain when getting a tattoo._ **

“Yeah, actually, kind of,” Eddie shouts over the roar of his bike as he pulls out of the parking lot and onto a main road.

**_Or willingly letting me take over your body._ **

Eddie grips the handlebars tighter and doesn’t respond. 

He stops by Mrs. Chen’s before going home, letting Venom pick out whatever it wants (two bags of frozen tater tots, a gallon of chocolate milk, three different kinds of chocolate candy and a family-sized bag of salt and vinegar chips) and enjoying Mrs. Chen’s reaction when Eddie shows her his new tattoo.

“My niece is very talented, but I still think most of your tattoos are silly.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Chen.”

Back at their apartment, Eddie sits on the couch and reads the news on his phone while Venom eats all the food with its head and two arms protruding out of Eddie’s right side. Venom shares the chips and one of the candy bars with Eddie. 

**_Eddie._ **

“Yeah, buddy.”

**_Your side hurts._ **

“Well, yeah, it’s gonna hurt for a while. Tattoos are like burns.”

Venom recedes back into Eddie’s body and slithers to his left side, swirling several small tendrils around the new tattoo. **_Is it still the good pain?_ **

Eddie thinks about it for a moment before answering, “No, actually, it sucks.”

Venom soothes the pain immediately. Eddie closes his eyes and drops his head back against the couch; he didn’t realize just how much his side had been hurting. He reaches his hand down to cup his rib cage, and Venom responds by pulling tendrils out of his skin and lacing them with Eddie’s fingers, directly over the new tattoo.

“What are you doing, buddy?” Eddie asks even as he squeezes Venom’s inhuman fingers. 

**_Marie called you "buddy," and now you’re calling me "buddy." It’s annoying._ **

“Oh good, something annoys you. Now I’m not the only one in this relationship that’s annoyed.”

**_Relationship._ **

Eddie clears his throat but still keeps his fingers tightly wound with Venom’s. “You know what I mean.”

Internally, Venom pulses near Eddie’s rib cage like a deep pressure concentrated against his bones. **_I think I can recreate the pain of getting a tattoo._ **

“What?” 

**_You like the pain of the needle marking your skin. I can imitate it._ **

Eddie feels tense, his body rigid. “But—but why?”

 **_Why not?_ ** ****

Eddie blinks. He can’t come up with a reason why not. He lets his fingers slip out of Venom’s grasp as Venom narrows one of its tendrils into an impossibly small point and presses Eddie’s side, gently at first and then speeding up as Eddie relaxes against the couch cushions.

“What the fuck, Vee, that’s so weird,” Eddie says on an exhale. 

**_You enjoy it._ **

“Yeah. It’s weird as shit, but yeah, I do.”

**_Maybe we would be less annoyed with each other if we did more things that we enjoyed._ **

“Hey, I basically let you do whatever you want.”

Venom stops poking him. **_I’d like to eat more people._ **

“Oh yeah? Well, I’d like to have some privacy every now and then.”

**_Privacy? What do you need privacy for?_ **

“I don’t know, like maybe if I had someone over and wanted them to spend the night.”

Venom moves up Eddie’s chest and wraps the bulk of itself around his shoulders. **_You want to have sex._ **

Eddie runs a hand down his face then settles both his hands on his knees. “Yeah, well, a man has needs, and my needs aren’t exactly being met right now, so.”

Venom creeps up his neck. **_I can help meet your needs, Eddie._ **

“I don’t know if—I’m not sure that’s a good—you know, I just—”

**_You want this. We can do whatever we want, Eddie. What’s stopping you?_ **

“Well, um, for starters, you’re an alien. I don’t even know how we would…”

Venom materializes in front of Eddie, massive and solid, deeply black and muscled with a nearly fully-formed body connected to Eddie directly at his hips. It places one hand on Eddie’s side, near the tattoo, and its other on his shoulder. **_This body is close to what you humans look and feel like._ **

“No, um, not really, Vee.” Eddie puts his hands on the couch, not daring to touch Venom even though it is taking up so much space in Eddie’s lap that it feels against instinct _not_ to put his hands near where its hips would be if it had them. “Do you even know or, like, understand what sex is? Is it something that _you_ want?”

Venom grins and then sticks its tongue out, moving it slowly from one side of its mouth to the other. **_Yes. And yes._ **

“What? For real?”

**_Definitely for real._ **

Eddie sucks his bottom lip between his teeth and looks up and down Venom’s body, considering. “When you kissed me in the woods—”

 **_Yes, I wanted to._ ** Venom moves its head forward, its sharp teeth an inch from Eddie’s face. **_I want to now._ **

Heart hammering in his chest, Eddie relents and puts his hands on Venom’s sides. They almost feel like hips, but Venom’s body is more like liquid and string than muscle and bone. Eddie digs his fingers in. He tilts his chin up tentatively, presses his nose against Venom’s face before pulling back, looking at the alien curiously, then he turns his head to the side and slots his mouth against Venom’s. 

Eddie tries to move his lips like a normal kiss, but Venom’s tongue fills his entire mouth, and it somehow suctions Eddie’s mouth against its own, and it’s too much, not enough, and Eddie’s arousal stirs in him so quickly that he would laugh if he could. The most he can do is make strained noises in the back of his throat.

After a minute or so, Eddie loses all sense of control and begins bucking his hips up, but there is nothing for him to buck against since their bodies are too intertwined in his lap. So he scrambles for one of Venom’s hands while simultaneously undoing his fly, and Venom gets the gist and wraps its weird malleable fingers around Eddie’s cock without breaking their kiss. 

Venom’s hand morphs around Eddie’s cock, stretching and folding and weaving threads together until it feels like Eddie is actually fucking into a hole—not quite human, so not possible to define as any type of genitalia—and while Eddie thrusts his hips up, Venom constricts and relaxes around his cock in a steady rhythm all while continuing to fuck its tongue down Eddie’s throat. Then, impossibly, tendrils are everywhere, snaking around Eddie’s balls, caressing his skin, kissing his nipples, pushing into his ass—Eddie comes early.

Venom unwinds itself from around Eddie’s cock and releases his mouth. Eddie takes a deep breath, choking a bit as he realizes just how far down his throat Venom’s tongue was. Venom rumbles a laugh, licks Eddie’s face, then noses at his jaw as it fuses its mass against his skin like a moving blanket. There is a feminine quality to Venom’s movements, which Eddie struggles to rationalize with his skewed view of the alien as a hulking beast that rips and bites people’s heads off. He decides it’s time to stop assigning gender-specific qualities to his alien.

**_I liked that._ **

Eddie tangles his hand in the tendrils of Venom’s neck. “Yeah, me too. Fuck.”

**_Is this the part where you freak out?_ **

“Uh yeah, I guess I should. _Fuck._ That just, um, it felt really fucking good. Really good.” Eddie tries to bring Venom’s face toward him for another kiss, but Venom resists.

**_So if you’re not going to freak out, then we should talk._ **

“What? Why?”

**_That’s what we are supposed to do. Our relationship has been nebulous and undefined, and it has made you irritable and difficult to live with._ **

“Hey, you never said I was difficult to live with,” Eddie replies, feeling irrationally hurt.

**_I’m saying it now._ **

“Alright. Fine.” Eddie tries to remember when he had to have this exact same conversation with Anne two weeks after he moved in with her. He thinks she may have approached him in a similar way, after sex, curled up close to him and soothing him with her touch. “It’s difficult for me to adjust to having you inside me, not because I don’t—it’s not that I don’t _like_ you, it’s just that it’s, uh, different. You’re a fucking alien. There’s no human experience that could’ve prepared me for…” He points between their connected bodies. “This.”

**_I was not prepared either, Eddie._ **

“What do you mean?”

Venom kisses him. **_I did not expect to like you this much._ **

Eddie automatically smiles, then tries to downplay it by rolling his eyes. “OK. So. A relationship then? Do you even know what that entails?”

**_I hope it entails a lot more sex._ **

Eddie laughs. “Yeah. But it’s also, I don’t know, taking care of each other and—”

**_We already take care of each other._ **

“—And communicating our feelings, and spending time together.”

**_We spend all of our time together._ **

“Yeah. Um. I’m not sure you’re really understanding what I’m saying, and I’m pretty bad at this, too, so it’s probably gonna be different than, like, my relationship with Anne.”

Venom grins wide, showing every one of its teeth. **_Good. She can help us._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Rebloggable link](https://tomhardysteeth.tumblr.com/post/620917246694408192/tattooed)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie goes out with Solomon, his ex-boyfriend from a decade ago, with encouragement from Venom. Things take an unwelcome turn near the end of their date.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just doing whatever the fuck I want with this fic, so I've put major spoilers in the end notes if you'd like some warnings!

On a dreary Saturday morning, Eddie is sitting up in bed, buck naked, drinking coffee and scrolling through his phone while Venom holds him. The symbiote is positioned behind him, its head perched on his shoulder and several large tentacles wrapped around his stomach and over his legs, while Eddie relaxes back against its pseudo-chest. Eddie is replying to a text from Anne when Venom’s tongue teases at his neck and a tentacle pinches his nipple. 

“Oh, good morning,” Eddie says with a laugh. 

He goes to set his mug and phone down, but Venom takes them both from him, leaving Eddie’s hands free to press against the tentacle around his waist and gently tangle his fingers through the sinewy ropes that make up Venom’s body. He turns his head to the side, and Venom meets him in a kiss. 

After a minute or so, Eddie’s phone rings. He makes a noise in the back of his throat and pulls away from Venom, a task that has become easier with practice and with some conversations about boundaries. Even so, Venom continues working its tongue against Eddie’s neck and shoulder as Eddie reaches for his phone and sees an unfamiliar number on the screen. 

Assuming it’s a source, he answers professionally, “Eddie Brock.”

Solomon’s deep laugh pours through the speaker. “It’s me. Sol. You answer your phone cute. How are you, Ed?”

Eddie squirms against Venom’s body, but Venom just holds him tighter and switches from licking his shoulder to gently biting it. “Uh, I’m good. Sorry, I didn’t recognize your number. Are you doing—how have you been doing?”

“I’m alright. Look, Eddie, I’m sorry.”

“What? Why?” 

“I got used to seeing you. Nobody comes into the shop as often as you, so when you stopped coming in for a while and I heard all these rumors, I realized that I, uh, cared. That I missed seeing you.”

Venom grazes its sharp teeth along the surface of Eddie’s skin, up to his ear and into his hair, leaving a trail of alien saliva behind. 

“And then I realized,” Sol continues, “that it was stupid and petty of me to ignore you when you came in. I loved seeing you, but then I wouldn’t even say a damn thing to you.”

“You, um. You loved seeing me?” Eddie asks, teeth gritted so as not to let out any embarrassing noises while Venom continues its ministrations. 

“Yeah. I mean, you broke my fucking heart and it seems like your ego’s just gotten more out of control since then—”

“Wow, cool, thanks.”

“—But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that you’re, like, a once-in-a-lifetime lover.”

Eddie groans and scrubs a hand down his face. Venom is laughing. “What’s up with you and that corny shit? You haven’t outgrown that yet?”

“Hey, you loved that corny shit when we were together. C’mon, Eddie, go out with me. I wanna hear what you’ve been up to.”

Venom hovers a tentacle dangerously close to Eddie’s already hard cock. Eddie arches his back and nudges his face against the side of Venom’s head. 

“Uh,” Eddie says, “I guess that would be alright. I’m not, um—I’m not looking for anything serious right now, though, Sol.”

“It’s just dinner, Ed. Tomorrow night.”

“Oh—alright. Yeah.”

Venom wraps its tentacle around Eddie’s cock in its best impression of a human hand.

“Text me your address, I’ll pick you up at 6.”

“OK, alright, yeah, bye, Sol!”

Eddie throws his phone down on the bed and reaches down to his cock to encourage Venom to use more pressure.

**_Do you think Solomon could be a good fit for us?_ **

“What—what the fuck do you mean, Vee?”

Venom strokes Eddie’s cock up and down while also performing some kind of vibrating pressure with its hand that sends a shiver up Eddie’s spine. **_If we wanted to be in a relationship with him, would it be easy or difficult?_ **

Eddie closes his eyes and cants his hips up against Venom’s hand. “Uh. I mostly just agreed to go out with him out of, um, curiosity.” Eddie lets out a high-pitched gasp as one of Venom’s tentacles probes at his ass. “Why, what do you want? I mean, I feel like we’ve been doing alright since we worked things out.” 

Venom doesn’t respond right away, choosing instead to lick and suck at Eddie’s neck and jaw while jacking him off and fucking him in the ass in a perfect rhythm. Eddie comes very quickly. 

“Alright,” Eddie says on an exhale as his body relaxes into Venom’s hold. “I know how much you love my neck, but it’ll still be there when we’re done talking, I promise.”

Venom growls and nips at Eddie’s earlobe before pulling its head away from Eddie to speak. **_You enjoy being in relationships with other human beings. If you don’t think it will happen with Anne, then I would be open to trying with someone else. As long as you are content._ **

“You’re saying you wouldn’t be, um, jealous? Or possessive?”

 **_You’re not making any sense, Eddie. You are already mine._ ** Venom runs its tongue along the tattoos of Eddie’s chest and shoulder. **_I possess you. No human could possibly take you from me or give you what I give you or have the kind of bond that you and I_ **—

“Alright, alright, Jesus. Shut the fuck up. So it wouldn’t bother you if I went out with Sol and, you know, had sex with him?”

**_No. I will be here._ **

“Yeah, but Sol doesn’t know about you, so you’d have to stay hidden.”

Venom growls. **_Why?_ **

“OK. So.” Eddie switches to his most patronizing tone. “Humans aren’t used to seeing aliens just, like, in general. So they’re _definitely_ not used to seeing aliens inside of the person they’re having sex with.”

There’s a long pause before Venom says, **_I will still be here. But I can stay hidden for you._ **

“Thank you.”

Eddie and Venom spend much of the remainder of the day in bed both talking and fucking, and it’s weird how _not_ weird it is. Eddie thinks their relationship is much the same as it was before but with more sex and fewer frustrations (probably correlated), so he hasn’t tried to push it into anything more substantial than that. He doesn’t even know what “more substantial” would be, since they already cohabitate inside the same body and spend every moment of their shared lives together. He really should talk to Anne about it, but he keeps chickening out when an opportunity comes up to tell her. It just seems odd to tell his ex that he’s fucking an alien, even if it _is_ an alien that she knows personally. 

The next day, Eddie wakes up feeling anxious. Venom tentatively spreads its tentacles over the expanse of his body in a soothing caress, but most of its bulk is inside Eddie, working scrupulously to calm his nerves and lower his heart rate. Eddie shifts and groans, grabbing one of Venom’s tendrils and weaving his fingers through it delicately.

“I’m just nervous about the date,” Eddie explains.

**_Sometimes your body feels this way and there is not a reason. I don’t like it._ **

“Aw, fuck. Um, I’m sorry, buddy.” Eddie sits up on the side of the bed and rubs sleep from his eyes. “It’s called anxiety. You know those pills I take sometimes, the ones you hate? They help me manage it.”

Venom burrows deeper inside Eddie, sending a relaxing sensation throughout his entire body. **_I can help you manage it._ **

“I know, and you do. But I still need the meds. And you also feel what I feel, so as long as you’re with me you’re gonna have to deal with this, too.” Eddie huffs a laugh. “I don’t think I’m as perfect of a host as you thought.”

Venom snakes its way across Eddie’s shoulders and materializes its head next to him. **_You’re fishing for pity._ **

“Oh, fuck off.”

Venom gently nips Eddie’s shoulder. **_I work inside you at all times to keep our bodies healthy together. Soothing our nerves is just a regular part of the process, nothing more. There are other things about you that are far more annoying._ **

Eddie just laughs and nudges his head against Venom’s in response. He kind of feels like an idiot for not bringing it up sooner. It’s never been a deal breaker in any of his relationships, but it’s also never been treated as anything other than a nuisance or a flaw. The fact that Venom sees his anxiety as just a regular part of Eddie is actually a really refreshing change of pace. 

He starts getting ready for his date with Sol an unreasonable two hours in advance. He spends an unusually long time in the shower, prompting Venom to tease him with tentacles pressed around his hips and ass, but Eddie asserts that he’s too nervous to fuck, and Venom moves appropriately back up into his shoulders. Eddie attempts to style his hair, gives up, puts on some cologne, then he picks out a dark-wash pair of jeans and a red button-down with the sleeves rolled up and the top few buttons undone. He puts on an assortment of bracelets, a few rings and a couple of necklaces, and by the time he’s done all that, it’s still an hour before Sol is supposed to show up. 

**_You’re still nervous. Let’s eat something,_ **Venom suggests.

“We’re going to dinner.”

**_We are always hungry._ **

Eddie thinks about it for a second. “Yeah, that’s true.” 

He makes several grilled cheese sandwiches, which Venom enjoys, and it’s easy to mindlessly cook, eat, cook, eat until his phone buzzes with a text from Sol. 

“OK, Vee, remember what we agreed on?”

**_I’m not a child, Eddie._ **

“Alright, fuck you, too.”

There’s a knock on the door. Venom vibrates inside Eddie. Eddie tells it one last time to chill out and stay hidden before he lets Solomon in.

Solomon doesn’t even look at Eddie when he opens the door. He is already eyeing his apartment and stepping past Eddie to have a look around. Eddie stands near the door and checks him out. He’s wearing a tattered tank top with the tattoo shop logo on it and an open button-down over it, two brightly-colored beaded necklaces resting against his chest and a thick leather bracelet on his wrist. Eddie fidgets with his own bracelets, wondering if he should shed his jewelry so they don’t look so similar. 

“Wow, Eddie, this is kinda a shithole,” Sol says as he stands in the middle of the apartment with his hands on his hips.

“Thank you.” Eddie walks toward the fridge. “You want something to drink before we go?”

“Nah, I got us a reservation, so we should get going.” He looks Eddie up and down. “You look good.”

Eddie swallows. “So do you.”

Sol comes toward him until he’s so close that Eddie has to tilt his head up to look at him. “Can I touch you?”

Eddie’s heart hammers in his chest. Venom doesn’t do anything about it. “Yeah, sure.”

Sol’s hand grazes his hip then circles around to his lower back, making Eddie take a step forward until his crotch is touching Sol’s thigh. “Hi, Ed,” he says sweetly.

“Hi.” Eddie places his hands on Sol’s hips. “We should go.”

Sol digs his fingers into his back before releasing him. “Yeah, we should. I was just curious, you know, ‘cause you’re a lot bigger than when we dated. Little Eddie been working out.”

Eddie grabs his leather jacket as they head out the door together. _“I_ got bigger? Look in a mirror, man.”

Sol laughs as he pats his belly. “Yeah, well, my ex was a good cook.”

“Oh yeah, how long were you guys together?”

“Uh, about seven years.”

“Shit, that’s a long time.”

They walk outside, and Sol places a hand on Eddie’s lower back and points to his car, leading him toward it. “Yeah, we were married, actually.” 

“Really? What happened?”

“Ah, nothing major. He and I just, kinda, grew apart, you know. Getting married was kind of impulsive, we did it right after the Supreme Court decision.”

“My ex told me on our first date that she wouldn’t get married until gay marriage was legal," Eddie says as he gets in the car.

**_Are you talking about Anne?_ **

"Yes, now hush," Eddie replies through gritted teeth immediately before Sol opens the driver's side door and gets in.

“Anne, right? How long were you with her?”

“How do you know about that?”

Sol keeps one hand on the wheel as he drives, the other resting in the center console. “You had a TV show. Your personal info is googlable, you know.”

“Oh, so you googled me?”

“No, actually, I asked Marie about you,” Sol admits with a laugh. “Last I heard, you were engaged, and then you fell off the face of the earth and Marie was real worried about you.”

Eddie shifts in his seat. “She was?”

“Eddie, that clip of you and that dude with the rockets was all over the internet, and then you disappeared and a few months later there were all these rumors—I mean, I heard that you had died in a motorcycle accident. Everybody was fucking worried, man.”

Eddie is quiet for a moment. He can feel Venom settling deep inside him, snuggling up against his organs. “Marie didn’t say anything to me about it.”

“Well, you know how she is. She told me you were OK, though, ‘cause her aunt had seen you.” Sol pulls into a parallel parking spot on a busy street. “Did your fiancée dump you before or after you went crazy and lost your show?”

Eddie smiles and pinches the bridge of his nose. “The same day.”

"Ouch, dude."

They get out of the car, Sol’s hand returning to Eddie’s lower back to guide him down the sidewalk toward the restaurant. There are a lot of people around, and Eddie feels a little nervous, irrationally worried that people are staring. He and Anne were together for so long, he forgot that it feels different being out in public with a man. Even in San Francisco, he’s worried about being gawked at. 

**_Your blood pressure has gone up. Are you OK with the way he is touching you? Snap your fingers once for yes, twice for no._ **

Eddie chokes back a laugh. He snaps his fingers once.

“Eddie?” a familiar voice asks in surprise.

It takes Eddie a moment to register that Anne and Dan are walking toward him and Sol. “Annie. Hey, Dan. Small world, huh?”

**_I want to say hi to them._ **

Eddie frantically snaps his fingers twice. 

Anne looks at him, confused, then looks at Solomon. “Yeah, um, we’re just going out to eat.” She holds her hand out for Sol to shake. “I’m Anne.”

“Solomon.” He shakes Anne’s hand, then Dan’s. Dan has to look up at him, which Eddie stupidly finds funny.

“Solomon?” Anne’s eyes widen. “Oh. _Solomon.”_

Sol laughs loudly at that. “Yeah, Ed was just telling me about you, actually.”

“Was he?” Anne raises an eyebrow at Eddie. “Well, don’t let us keep you. I’m sure _Ed_ has a lot to say about me.” She reaches for Eddie’s neck, pulling him in for a hug. “I’ll see you later.” Right up against his ear, she whispers, “Hi, Venom.”

 **_Hi, Annie,_ **Venom rumbles back happily.

Anne lets go, then Eddie shakes Dan’s hand and they part ways. 

Sol keeps his hands to himself as they walk the rest of the way to the restaurant. “So you’re on pretty good terms with them?”

“Yeah.” Eddie scratches the back of his head. “Dan’s really chill. They both helped me, uh, through some stuff. So.”

Their conversation is interrupted by their arrival at the restaurant, a small, cozy place full of stylish young people. The hostess leads them to a booth by a window, and their server arrives immediately. Eddie orders whiskey and ignores Venom’s grumbling about it.

“So are you gonna tell me what happened?” Sol asks.

“Nah, I wasn’t really planning on it.”

Sol smiles at him, warm and inviting. “I used to watch your show all the time. You know, it always felt like you were trying to pick a fight with somebody. Like you were just waiting for somebody to notice that you were saying shit you shouldn’t be saying.”

Eddie shifts in his seat and looks absentmindedly down at his menu. “Yeah, I was a little self-righteous.”

Venom sneaks a liquidy strand around Eddie’s palm in reassurance.

“And you’re not now?”

“Well, I’m not on TV anymore, so no.”

The server returns to take their order, and Venom wraps around Eddie’s index and middle fingers in an imitation of rings as Eddie hands the menu over. He orders just one entree, a rare steak that he knows Venom will like.

“Is that what you meant by my ego getting out of control? You were talking about my show?” Eddie asks.

“Yeah.” Sol leans forward, folds his arms on the table and lowers his voice. “I couldn’t get over how you were still such a brat. It made me really, _really_ wanna fuck you.”

Eddie’s whole body heats up. He crosses his legs under the table. “Man, I thought I was making a difference in the world, and all I was doing was making you horny.”

Sol laughs loudly but keeps his voice quiet as he says, “See? Still a brat. Did Anne ever tie you up?”

Eddie takes a drink before answering. “Yep.”

Sol makes a face like he wasn’t expecting that. “Did she peg you?”

“No,” Eddie replies with a laugh. He had forgotten that with Solomon, foreplay starts at the very beginning of the date. “Sometimes she would tie me to the bed and ride me, but that’s about as kinky as we would get. Now why are you asking about my sex life with my ex?”

“Hey, like I said, I just wanted to catch up with you. You won’t tell me about whatever shit you went through, but you’ll tell me about your sex life. I’m taking wins where I can get them.”

**_Eddie. You are horny._ **

Eddie hides one hand under the table and snaps his fingers once.

Venom moves the bulk of itself toward Eddie’s groin. **_Would you like me to do something about it?_ **

Solomon is still talking. Eddie snaps twice.

Venom pulses inside Eddie, spreading out in his thighs and hips. **_Are you sure?_ **

Eddie considers it, snaps twice.

 **_So you’re not sure? You_ ** **do** **_want me to do something about it?_ **

Eddie snaps once.

Venom stays inside Eddie, crawling itself through the very cells of his body, concentrating in his prostate, his balls, his cock. As Venom applies a bone-deep pressure, Eddie feels his pleasure rise from his groin all the way up to his throat, like his body is being turned inside out. His hips jerk involuntarily at the same time that he momentarily loses muscle control of his face.

“Eddie? You with me?” Solomon asks.

“Hmm?”

Venom applies pressure again, sending waves of warm pleasure rolling up through Eddie’s body that feel as good as an orgasm without actually being an orgasm. He manages to compose himself enough to snap twice.

**_You want me to stop?_ **

He snaps once, furiously.

Venom retreats, Eddie relaxes.

“Uh, yeah, sorry,” Eddie says with a crooked smile. “I’m just not used to—I mean, I’m just not good at this kind of stuff anymore, man.”

Sol leans forward, teasing. “What kind of stuff?”

“Dating. Flirting. You know, whatever it is we’re doing.”

“Well, I know what I’d _like_ to be doing, but we gotta get through this part first,” Sol replies.

Eddie’s phone buzzes with a text from Anne, which he immediately checks. 

_Solomon?? I thought he hated you?? Did you tell him about V???_

“Eddie.”

“Hmm?”

Solomon waits until Eddie looks up at him. “What’s got you so distracted?”

“I’m sorry, just, uh, my mind’s all over the place, I guess.” He pockets his phone. “Being pulled in too many different directions.”

“Well, I’d like to help with that. Give you just one thing to focus on.”

**_He’s being so nice to you. I like him._ **

Eddie bites the inside of his cheek to stop himself from mentioning to Venom that it’s been liking everyone they interact with lately. 

When the food arrives, Eddie is glad to let Solomon do most of the talking while Eddie scarfs down his steak and drinks a second whiskey. Solomon teases Eddie about his appetite, assures him it will catch up to him one day, prompting Eddie to defiantly order some obscene chocolate brownie concoction for dessert. Venom thrums happily inside him.

On their walk back out to the car, Eddie says, “We’re going back to my place, right?”

Sol laughs. “You could at least pretend to play hard to get.”

“I mean, I’ve been told I’m a once-in-a-lifetime lover, so that’s made me pretty confident.”

Before Eddie’s even done with his sentence, Sol is manhandling him by the hips and pushing him up against the side of the car to kiss him. Eddie makes a surprised noise and grabs Sol’s waist in return, and he’s leaning so far back against the car that he thinks he would probably lose his balance if Sol wasn’t holding him up.

**_I can feel that you’re enjoying this._ **

Eddie balls his fists into Sol’s shirt and feels the smallest of vibrations around his fingers where Venom is still wrapped. While still focused on kissing Sol, Eddie surreptitiously rubs his thumb against the tendrils around his index finger. Venom responds by wrapping around his thumb, too, and by pushing the rest of its mass up near Eddie’s shoulders and neck and vibrating like a cat beneath the surface of his skin. Eddie’s heart pounds in his chest; he hasn’t forgotten that they are in public and that anybody can see them.

Sol breaks the kiss. “C’mon, sweetheart,” he whispers before releasing Eddie so they can get in the car.

Eddie looks around nervously, makes eye contact with one passerby, then looks down at the three rings circled around his fingers. He squeezes his hand into a fist; the rings squeeze back. 

When they get back to Eddie’s apartment, Sol pushes him against the kitchen island and continues kissing him, slotting his thigh between Eddie’s legs and rubbing against his crotch. Eddie is already hard, but he can tell Sol isn’t quite there yet. He reaches down to his fly to help him out.

“Eddie, I’m 50 years old, it ain’t gonna happen that fast,” Sol whispers with a laugh, nosing at Eddie’s neck. He pushes his thigh more firmly against Eddie. “I guess you still have the libido of a 25-year-old, huh?”

Venom is spread like threads throughout Eddie’s body, simultaneously calming him and contributing to his arousal, so Eddie kisses Sol’s cheek and says confidently, “You have no idea.”

“Oh.” Sol raises his eyebrows. “OK then. You got a secret you wanna share?”

Eddie’s insides go cold before he realizes Sol is probably just referring to pills. When they were dating, they occasionally did recreational drugs together, oftentimes before and after sex and a couple of times during.

Still feeling brave, Eddie says, “I do have a secret, but I’m not sharing it.” He kisses Sol hard while balling his fist into the front of his tank top to bring him down to his height. “C’mon.”

While Eddie leads Sol back to his bedroom, Venom says, **_I’m the secret, right?_ **

Eddie snaps once.

They continue making out as they fall into Eddie’s bed, clumsily removing their shirts, and Sol stops for a second to admire Eddie’s body. 

“Most of the new stuff is Marie’s work,” Eddie says awkwardly. He’s lying beneath Sol and feels rather silly in just his jeans and his jewelry. 

“Oh, I’m not really looking at your tattoos.” Sol squeezes Eddie’s bicep then runs his hand up over his shoulder and back down his chest. He tweaks his nipple. “You have a fucking great body, sweetheart.”

Venom purrs inside Eddie, then traces back over the spots where Sol touched, swirling gently inside Eddie’s muscles. **_You do have a fucking great body. It might be the main reason why I decided to stay on earth with you._ **

Eddie takes a deep breath. “Thanks, babe.”

Sol quirks an eyebrow at the pet name but doesn’t say anything before leaning back down to kiss Eddie’s neck. Eddie arches into the touch, eyes closed, hands digging into Sol’s broad back, toes curled because he’s ticklish. 

**_You are beautiful like this. I’m enjoying it._ **

The compliments go straight to Eddie’s dick, so he quickly fumbles with the fly of Sol’s jeans and is surprised when Venom’s small tendrils reach out from his hands to help him with the button. Sol moans and continues sucking kisses into his neck and chest. 

Once Sol’s jeans and underwear are off, Eddie takes him in his hand, and Venom retreats fully back into Eddie's body.

**_I’ll stay hidden. I am going to watch though._ **

Sol flips their positions, lifting Eddie like he weighs nothing and then holding him by the back of the neck to guide him toward his cock. 

**_Do it, Eddie. Do it._ **

It’s not like Eddie needed the extra encouragement, but he feels smug knowing that Venom clearly derives pleasure from this. Eddie grips the base of Sol’s cock and wraps his lips around his tip, moving slowly at first, teasingly circling his tongue around the head, sucking off with a pop, until—

**_You enjoy teasing, don’t you? Is that what it means to be a brat?_ **

Eddie ignores Venom, opting instead to focus on the frustrated noises Sol is making and the hand fisting Eddie’s short hair in a painful grip.

Sol's cock is thick and average in length, and as Eddie slides his lips down it, he is surprised when he reaches the base and has to move his hand out of the way as his mouth makes it all the way to the hairs at Sol’s crotch.

“Jesus, Eddie, what the fuck,” Sol says on an exhale as his whole body twitches.

 **_I might be helping a little bit,_ **Venom admits.

As he bobs up and down the entire length of Sol’s cock, Eddie reaches down and tries to shove his hands into his pants to jack himself off. 

**_He won’t notice. Let me help you._ **

Venom takes over Eddie’s hand, slick black tendrils lacing over his skin until it is twice the size of Eddie’s actual hand, and Eddie doesn’t have to put in any effort at all as Venom jacks him. After a few minutes, Sol comes down the back of Eddie’s throat, and Eddie swallows easily. Eddie forces the muscles of his hand to retake control back from Venom. He hasn’t come yet, but they have plenty of time for that.

“Fuck. Eddie, _fuck,”_ Sol says as he breathes heavily, lying flat on his back, the heels of his hands pressed against his eyes. “I swear I just blacked out.”

Eddie crawls up the length of his body so he can hover over him. “You lost control there for a little bit, huh?”

Sol puts his hands on Eddie’s hips and pouts at him. “Well, I guess you’ve learned some things.” He squeezes him. “What were you saying earlier about being tied to the bed while your ex rode you?”

Eddie laughs. “Oh, you wanna try that? Aren’t your knees a little too old for that kind of work?”

“Hey, mind your business. You got some ties I can use?”

Eddie moves away from Sol and clumsily stands up. “Yeah, uh, let me check.” 

Before heading to the closet, Eddie checks the drawer of his nightstand for condoms and curses under his breath when he finds none. 

“What?” Sol asks from where he’s lying comfortably on the bed, one arm folded behind his head.

“Uh, I don’t have any condoms. Fuck, I’m sorry, I guess I thought _you_ would be fucking _me—”_

“It’s OK, it’s OK,” Sol placates as he gets up and starts putting his clothes back on. “I have some in my car. I mean, they’ll be a little big for you, but…”

“Oh, fuck off.”

Sol laughs and comes up behind Eddie, placing a kiss on his cheek and then smacking his ass as he says, “Be right back.”

Once Sol is out of the apartment, Eddie says, “You alright, babe?”

Venom pulls out of his shoulder, its teeth bared as it surveys Eddie. **_Yes._ ** It affectionately butts its head against Eddie’s face. **_You are perfect, Eddie. Mine._ **

Eddie rolls his eyes, but he can’t help but smile. “Yeah, yeah, you big sap. And hey, as fun as it is, no helping when Sol gets back, alright? He doesn’t know that you’re here, which means he definitely doesn’t wanna have sex with you.”

 **_I’ll be on my best behavior,_ **Venom says mockingly. 

It’s more difficult than Eddie thought it would be to find ties in his closet. He’s digging through a pile of laundry when he realizes that Sol’s been gone for too long. Eddie’s first thought is that he bailed, which would be difficult to process and would be a real hit to his self-esteem, but then when he grabs his phone to call Sol, he finds two phones on the nightstand.

**_We should go outside to check on him._ **

Eddie throws on his clothes and pockets both phones before leaving his apartment. It’s just after midnight, and he passes nobody on his way outside. Despite a lack of street lights, Eddie spots Sol right away, his back to Eddie and his hands pressed to the side of his car and a cop patting him down. Eddie’s blood runs cold.

“Hey, what the fuck?” Eddie shouts as he righteously crosses the street.

The cop jumps in surprise as he turns toward Eddie, one hand dropping to the weapon at his hip. Eddie doesn’t bother looking to see whether it’s a taser or a gun, it won’t matter to Venom either way. 

“Officer Carmen, good to see you,” Eddie says with a sardonic smile. “You still filing false reports and harassing the homeless?”

Sol says, “Eddie, please,” at the same time the officer shouts, “This is none of your business, Brock, get lost before I arrest you, too.”

“You’re not arresting him, though, you’re patting him down for no fucking reason,” Eddie continues, too loudly. “Did he consent to that? Did you consent to that, Sol?”

“Eddie, please, for the love of god—”

“Shut the fuck up. Both of you, shut up,” Officer Carmen says, one hand still at his hip and the other shoved against Sol’s back. “Brock, this is the last time I’m saying it, get lost.”

Eddie crosses his arms over his chest. “Is he free to go?”

Sol turns his head to glare at Eddie, but he doesn’t say anything.

Carmen calls for backup. He stares at Eddie.

“So, just to be clear, you’re not arresting me because you’re too chickenshit to let him go?” Eddie asks, pointing at Sol. 

Carmen pulls his gun—definitely a gun, not a taser—and points it at Eddie.

Eddie mouths at him, “Do it.”

**_When do I get to eat him?_ **

“Soon, babe, don’t worry,” Eddie says gently while maintaining eye contact with Carmen.

**_Did you change your mind about eating police officers?_ **

“Yeah, I did.”

“Who the fuck are you talking to, Brock?” Carmen yells, gun jerking.

“None of your goddamn business, Carmen!” Eddie yells back, matching his cadence. 

Carmen’s eyes go wide. He looks at Eddie like he’s trying to figure him out, trying to decide something.

“Go ahead. Shoot me.”

“Eddie! What is your _problem,_ man?” Sol shouts, desperate.

Carmen immediately moves his gun to point at Sol instead. “Shut the fuck up!” 

**_I may not be able to move quickly enough if he decides to shoot Sol instead of us._ **

Eddie’s heart drops to his stomach. He might have miscalculated the risk here.

“Oh, so now you’re quiet,” Carmen says.

Eddie doesn’t take the bait. With his arms still folded over his chest, he can feel Venom creeping near the surface of his skin, weaving through layers of cells so slowly and intricately that Eddie can feel movement in the smallest of places, each hair follicle of his arm like a live wire. There is silence in the street, their standoff apparently not loud enough to garner any attention. It’s hard to tell how much time passes before sirens sound in the distance and a police car skids to a stop directly in front of them. 

The two new guys don’t hesitate. They both storm right up to Sol, one with cuffs and the other with a hand at his hip, and neither of them bother to look in Eddie’s direction. Carmen backs off, both hands going to his gun, which he points at Sol. The new officers are shouting at Sol as they place hands on him. 

Eddie says, “Shit, _fuck_ , fuck—”

Venom gets the message and in less than a second Eddie is swallowed whole. Nestled safely within the latticework of his symbiote, Eddie simply watches as Venom absorbs and ultimately dissolves the bullets that are shot at it. It rips Carmen’s left arm clean off his body and devours it before biting the heads off the other two officers. Carmen is screaming and clutching at what’s left of his shoulder, but Venom doesn’t let him be in misery too long. It eats him in two bites. The other officers’ bodies lie headless on the ground in front of them, and although Eddie can tell that Venom is approaching fullness, it quickly swallows them down, too. 

Sol takes off at a sprint.

“No! Solomon! Babe, get back inside me,” Eddie yells.

**_I can’t yet. We ate too much, our digestive system will collapse and we will die._ **

“Jesus fuck, let me talk to him at least. Sol! Solomon, it’s me! Stop!”

**_Do you want to follow him? I’m sure I can make him stop._ **

Knowing that Sol’s phone is still in his pocket, Eddie tells Venom to go ahead. If they don’t stop him now, it might not be easy to reach him later. 

Venom gets in front of Sol very quickly, and Sol freezes in place long enough for Eddie to frantically say, “It’s me! Eddie. I have your phone. I’m sorry, I’m stuck in here right now but I promise it’s me.”

“Please don’t eat me,” is all Sol says.

**_We won’t eat you. We like you._ **

“Shut up, Vee,” Eddie says. “Sol, I’m sorry, I have this—it’s an alien that lives inside me. Its name is Venom. That’s why—you can see now why I didn’t wanna talk about all the shit I went through.”

“What the _fuck_ are you fucking saying to me, Eddie? What the fuck am I looking at?”

They’re in the middle of an empty street. If he was in control of his body, Eddie would look around to make sure Sol’s shouting wasn’t causing any unwanted attention. “Look, I was infected with an alien,” he says calmly. “Its name is Venom and it’s really not bad.”

“You just ate three cops!”

“Shh, shut up! Jesus, dude, let me—”

“You’re telling _me_ to shut up? Are you. Fucking kidding me.”

**_Eddie. We need to get rid of the cop cars._ **

“Oh, fuck. Sol, please—just go back to my apartment and I’ll explain every—”

“No! No, you’re not explaining shit. I’m looking at a fucking monster right now. And you almost got me killed back there!” Sol points an accusatory finger at Venom’s face. “Like I said, your goddamn ego—for fuck’s sake, Eddie, you’re so self-righteous, you didn’t stop and think that you could’ve _gotten me killed—”_

“But I had Venom! I know, I fucked up, I should’ve known they’d—I knew Venom could protect us, though, and—”

“Yeah, but _I_ didn’t know that!” Sol yells, pointing a finger at himself and then at Venom again. “ _I_ thought you were just fucking stupid enough to get me shot!”

Venom slowly melts away back into Eddie’s body. Sol flinches but doesn’t try to run away again. 

“It’s inside you now? It’s always inside you?” Sol asks warily.

“Yeah.”

“So when we were—we were messing around…?”

“It was aware of what was going on, yeah. Not an active participant though.”

**_This conversation is going poorly._ **

“Let me get this straight, Eddie. You nearly got me killed. You failed to tell me there was an alien inside you. You planned on fucking me without telling me that an alien was inside you?”

**_Very poorly._ **

“If I had told you from the start, would you have gone out with me?”

Sol throws his hands up. “It doesn’t matter what I would’ve done, you should’ve told me anyway! I’m going back to my car and going the fuck home.” He turns away from Eddie and starts walking down the street.

“Wait, I have your phone,” Eddie calls after him lamely.

Sol stops, sighs, and turns back to Eddie with his hand out. They look at each other as Eddie hands the phone off.

“How’d you know that cop anyway?” Sol asks quietly.

“Uh, investigated him for a story on corruption in the SFPD.”

Sol nods. “It’s amazing you’ve been a dumbass this long without getting yourself killed.”

“Yeah.”

Sol pats his face, and it’s only kind of patronizing. “Just try to be less stupid in the future. I’ll see you, Ed.”

As Sol walks away, Eddie stands with his hands in his pockets and watches him go.

Venom slides back up to the surface of his skin. **_You_ ** **are** **_a dumbass, but I won’t let you get killed._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SPOILERS: 1) Lots of discussion about Eddie having sex with someone who doesn't know about Venom, so there are consent issues since Venom is sentient and can feel what Eddie feels, but the good news is that this particular scenario would never happen in real life! 2) Solomon (OC from the first chapter) is Black and is racially profiled and wrongfully stopped and frisked by cops near the end of this chapter, and Eddie acts like a Grade A White Savior Dumbass to try to help him. Venom eats the cops.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After his disaster of a date with Sol, Eddie and Venom hide out at Anne’s apartment, and Eddie begins to unravel instead of dealing with the consequences of his actions.

After Sol ditches him, Eddie dejectedly walks back up to his apartment and ignores the mess of his closet spilling into his room, the evidence that he had been looking forward to something exciting and fun just an hour or so ago. Venom is quiet until Eddie strips down to his boxer briefs and crawls under the covers, burying his head under his pillow to try to drown out the anxieties creeping through his brain. 

**_You didn’t finish earlier. Would you like me to fuck you?_ **Venom asks with a gentle press of its mass inside Eddie’s hips, like it’s holding him.

“No,” Eddie replies sleepily. “Just. Help me sleep if you can.”

Venom cocoons itself around Eddie from his toes to his chin, and just as Eddie is about to protest the clinginess of the gesture, Venom starts pulsing like a massive, undulating heartbeat against Eddie’s body, and it soothes him immediately. Even so, Eddie can barely sleep. He and Venom talk during the night, Venom apparently perceptive enough to allow space for Eddie to ramble about nothing in particular until he drifts off into a fitful sleep, only to wake a couple hours later to go through the whole routine again. 

The next day, it’s on the news that three cops are missing and that they were last seen in Eddie’s neighborhood. Eddie tries to call Solomon, he doesn’t answer. He texts him, he doesn’t answer.

Eddie knows that Venom can handle anything that might be coming their way, but he still feels scared of the possibility that the two of them could end up in a lab, being tortured, getting separated, dying; the possibilities are endless. In hindsight, he really fucked up.

Eddie stays cooped up in his apartment for a week, not sleeping, obsessively checking the news, trying and failing to contact Sol. 

Anne calls him on the sixth day and barely says hello before announcing that she is on her way to his place. 

“I’m assuming you haven’t seen this,” she says as she breezes past him and into his apartment, her phone held out for him to take.

Eddie rubs his eye with one hand while accepting her phone with his other. On the screen is a very dark video of a street, obviously taken from a couple stories above, and there is a giant black mass holding a large ball of metal in its hands before disappearing from the frame, with the person recording saying, “What the shit is that?” before the video cuts off. 

“Well, at least they didn’t get the first part,” Eddie says, resigned. 

Anne closes her eyes and sighs loudly. “Don’t tell me what happened, I don’t want to know. I’ve already...been suspicious of the news this week.” She takes her phone back and shoves it in her purse. “Venom wasn’t exactly subtle when he first met you, so there are plenty of people out there with footage of him in all his gooey glory. Literally anybody could be connecting the dots right now, you realize that, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do, Annie.” Eddie shrugs. “What do you want me to do about it?”

“I want you to come stay with me for a little bit.”

“What?”

**_She said you should stay with her for a little bit._ **

“Just to lay low for a while, you know, just in case.”

“I can’t—I mean—what?” Eddie sputters, confused both by Venom and Anne talking over each other and by the topic at hand.

“Well, if you’re uncomfortable with it, I’m sure we can find somewhere else for you to go. Maybe Dan’s place, I’d just have to talk to him about it.”

“Annie.”

She looks pointedly at him, waiting for him to continue.

“Dan sent me home, by myself, after I had a seizure in the MRI machine. You know, you guys both let me go home after I had a mental breakdown in that restaurant.”

“Yeah, and you were attacked that night. We should’ve kept an eye on you, it was wrong of us to leave you alone.”

**_We weren’t alone._ **

Eddie crosses his arms over his chest, tucking his hands under his armpits. “So.” He clears his throat. “So you want to help us. Me and Venom. Protect us, or whatever?”

“I don’t understand why you’re being defensive about this, we’re your friends. Friends help each other.”

“You know, I just.” He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “I don’t mean to drag you guys into my—our bullshit. Mine and Venom’s bullshit. My fuck-ups are not your responsibility.” Lamely, he tacks on, “Anymore.”

“I want to help you, Eddie.” She walks up to him until she’s in his personal space, her eyebrows drawn together as she looks up at him. “What would have happened if I hadn’t been there last time, with Drake? I can’t live with myself if something happens to you.”

Venom shifts inside Eddie, rising closer to the surface of his skin and gravitating toward Anne, causing Eddie to involuntarily take a step forward. He falters back.

“Sorry, that was—”

**_Tell her we’d like to stay with her._ **

Eddie sighs. “It’s Vee, it wants us to stay with you.”

Anne smiles and stretches her hand out, and before Eddie can decide how he is supposed to respond, a tentacle emerges from his right hand and snakes affectionately around Anne’s arm. She moves her fingers, sifting Venom’s mass between them.

“C’mon, Eddie. Just pack some stuff up and come with me.”

Eddie looks at the tentacle as he says, “Traitor.”

**_She is right and you are stupid and stubborn._ **

“I took the cable car here, so we can take your bike back to my place. The guest bedroom’s all set up.” She extricates her arm from Venom’s hold and pulls her phone back out, tapping on the screen as she says, “I’m telling Dan, he’ll be over tonight, too.”

“Wait, Annie. Uh.”

**_Eddie, just let it—_ **

“No, Vee, not that. We haven’t told her…”

**_Oh._ **

“Told me what?” Anne asks, her voice dropping an octave.

Eddie makes a noncommittal noise as he walks around the kitchen, mindlessly opening and closing the fridge and then sitting on a barstool. “Um.” Eddie blinks, changes his mind. “I just don’t want to impose on you guys, you know, with my fucked up shit with Vee. I don’t want to make things, uh, weird.”

**_Coward._ **

Anne squints at him. “Pack up your stuff, Eddie, come on. That video is two days old, anybody could come knocking on your door any minute now.”

“What, like an ex-fiancee?”

Anne rolls her eyes. “Venom, tell him to be nice to me.”

Venom forms its head out of Eddie’s left shoulder. **_Be nice to her._ **

“Alright, this is gonna be a fucking blast,” Eddie mutters to himself as he heads to his room to pack a bag. 

Apparently Anne has nothing to do for the entire day, because once they arrive at her apartment she hovers around Eddie, making sure he gets settled in, asking him if he needs anything. Mr. Belvedere hovers, too, rubbing up against Eddie’s leg, and seemingly not finding anything odd about the tendrils that emerge from his shin to pet his fur. 

The guest bedroom is set up exactly the same as when Eddie lived there. In fact, pretty much everything about the apartment is the same. He and Anne had decorated it together, picked out furniture together, arranged everything together. Each of the bedrooms has one wall of floral wallpaper behind the headboard of the beds, which had been Eddie’s idea. He tosses his bag onto the bed as he looks at the wallpaper. 

**_Eddie._ **

“Mmm.”

**_Why didn’t you tell her?_ **

Eddie can hear Anne moving about the apartment, so he keeps his voice low. “I don’t know, she was in a hurry to get back here, and, you know, she’s so worried about us. I just didn’t want to add to the stress by trying to explain that you and I are fucking.”

Venom eases its way around Eddie’s shoulders. **_We are more to each other than that._ **

“I know, sweetheart. We’ll tell her soon. Just. Not now.”

**_I can feel that you feel strange being here. Is it because you used to live here?_ **

Eddie is still looking at the wallpaper. “Yeah.”

“Eddie?” Anne calls from the hallway.

“Yeah, come in.”

Anne opens the door but keeps her hand on the knob, only stepping halfway into the room. “Dan will be here in a bit. He’s picking up Italian for dinner, what would you and Venom like?”

Venom takes over Eddie’s face without warning. **_Spaghetti and meatballs, lasagna, ravioli and garlic bread._ **

“Jesus, Eddie, how do you afford groceries?” Anne asks, unfazed.

Eddie regains control of his face. “Well, we eat mostly junk, so it’s actually less expensive than when you and I were on that health kick. And Mrs. Chen gives us a discount for eating all the scumbags that threaten her.”

Anne had been typing on her phone, but she stops and looks up at Eddie, eyebrows raised. “Just out of curiosity, how many people in this city know that you have a people-eating monster living inside you?”

Eddie sits on the edge of the bed. “Um. Including you and Dan, at least five.”

“What the _fuck,_ Eddie!”

“What? It’s fine! It’s not like they’re gonna tell anybody.”

“You just need to be careful. More careful than you’ve been. Are you working on anything right now, any reason for you to go out anywhere?”

Eddie scoffs at her. “Are you seriously gonna stop me from leaving the apartment?”

“I’m just trying to make sure you don’t get into any trouble. That’s all. OK? I’m trying to look out for you, and I’m sure Venom would like to stay out of trouble, too.”

“Hey, leave Vee out of this.”

 **_No, she’s right._ ** Venom pulls itself out of Eddie’s shoulder as usual, so that Anne can hear it. **_Eddie has barely slept this week because he’s worried about us getting caught. Eddie, I think it would ease your mind to stay inside and rest for a few days._ **

“Wow, that’s very nice and intuitive of you, Venom,” Anne says. “Dan will be here soon with dinner. I’ll let you two get settled in.”

As soon as Anne is gone, Eddie scrubs a hand down his face and sighs. “You know, when you’re in a relationship with someone, typically you’re on that person’s side. You have their back in situations like that.”

Venom’s head floats just a few inches in front of Eddie’s face. **_I_ ** **am** **_on your side. You’re so tired, let yourself get some rest._ ** It butts its face against Eddie’s. **_And you’re not working on anything right now, so there really is no reason to leave. The cops we ate will fuel our bodies for a few weeks._ **

Eddie’s heart races at the mention of the cops, but Venom moves minutely through his veins and easily slows the pumping of blood, evening his heart rate back out. He lies back on the bed, eyes closed as he pets Venom’s head, coaxing the symbiote into resting against his chest like a cat.

“How come you can do stuff like slow my heart rate, but you can’t do stuff like fix my tiredness?”

**_There are a lot of things going on in your brain that I am still learning how to deal with. It’s not like I came to earth as an expert in human anatomy._ **

Eddie pulls at Venom’s liquidy fronds until more of its mass emerges out of his body and pools onto his chest and abdomen. “Do I seem as weird to you as you do to me?”

 **_Your body sometimes doesn’t make sense._ ** Venom threads itself tighter together and forms a small, human-shaped body to slot over top of Eddie. **_And most humans look strange or ugly to me, but I find you attractive._ ** It licks a line up the side of Eddie’s face. **_Wait, you think I’m weird?_ **

Eddie squeezes Venom’s makeshift hips. “Well, yeah. But I also like the way you look, even though you’re kind of scary.” He runs his hands up and down Venom’s sides, digging his fingers through the latticework. “And I especially like the way you feel. When you’re in me, outside of me, doesn’t matter. I like all of it.”

**_We are getting better at this, aren’t we?_ **

“Yeah.”

Venom licks a line down Eddie’s neck then buries its face against his skin, gently sucking and biting while pulling more of itself out from Eddie’s hips so it can form legs to straddle his lap. Eddie moans, tilts his chin up to lengthen his neck, presses his hands into Venom’s back to bring it closer to his chest. They make out for several minutes while Venom rocks and grinds above Eddie, and while Venom uses its two human-like hands to grip Eddie’s shoulders and sides, it also uses however many number of tentacles it takes to undo the fly of his jeans, wrap around his cock, fill up his ass, snake around his thighs and lift him off the bed until Eddie is subsumed by Venom’s threads and loses control of his body save for his hands. He takes purchase of Venom’s hips and pushes down until Venom seats itself on his cock, the tentacle that had been wrapped around it disappearing into the rest of its mass as it forms a perfect hole for Eddie to fuck. The tentacle in his ass thrusts into him, setting the rhythm for their fuck. Venom easily pushes up into Eddie while simultaneously grinding down against him, and Eddie is powerless beneath it. He teeters on the edge of orgasm until tears are in his eyes, and when he finally comes Venom collapses on top of him, its tentacles going lax and feeling like liquid washing over the surface of his skin. Eddie runs his fingertips over Venom’s mass, but he freezes at the sound of Anne moving about in the apartment.

“Oh my god,” Eddie says. “What the fuck are we doing.”

**_We just had sex. Now we are relaxing. Why do you need an explanation for that, are you having one of your panic things? Your blood pressure is going up._ **

“Jesus, shut _up._ I used to live here. I used to sleep in that other room with Anne, and now I’m—I just got here an hour ago and I’m fucking an alien in the guest bedroom with Anne right outside the door.”

**_Well, she could join us if we asked her to._ **

Eddie sighs and rubs his eyes. “You’re not getting the point, and I don’t really have the energy to explain this very human concept to you right now, no offense.”

Venom melts back into Eddie’s body. **_You can explain it to me later._ **

Anne shouts from the hallway a minute later to let Eddie know that Dan is on his way up with food. 

They are all overly polite to each other as they move about the kitchen, and despite Anne and Dan saying that Eddie can just relax, he insists on helping set the table and he also weirdly feels a need to demonstrate that he knows exactly where everything in the kitchen is. Dan is whatever the opposite of jealous and possessive is, so of course Eddie is posturing for nobody but himself. 

“Look at us, actually eating at the table,” Dan says with a smile as they all sit down. “Mine and Anne’s schedules rarely line up for us to have a meal together during the week.”

“Oh, well, I don’t mean to intrude, if you guys want to have some time to yours—”

“No, no,” Dan placates. “I’m glad you’re staying here, buddy. How’s Venom? I still wish he’d let me run some tests on you, make sure he’s not eating your organs or anything.”

Venom materializes to Eddie’s left. **_I’m not. Eddie keeps me well-fed now._ **

Eddie chokes on the sip of water he was drinking. 

“Don’t tell us anything else,” Anne says seriously. “Please, don’t implicate us.”

“Yeah, Eddie, I really hope you two are being careful,” Dan says. “I’d hate to see you on the news. Well, I’d hate to see you as the _subject_ of a news story. I wouldn’t mind it if you were still _on_ the news, doing the news.”

“Oh, I don’t think I’ll be doing that again anytime soon,” Eddie responds awkwardly before taking a bite out of a piece of garlic bread.

Venom is slurping up spaghetti and making somewhat of a noisy mess beside him.

“Vee,” Eddie says quietly. “Not so gross, buddy.”

Venom sticks its tongue out at Eddie as it delicately picks up a fork and knife and begins eating in a more civilized manner.

“So you guys are getting along better, it seems?” Anne asks, looking between Eddie and Venom like she isn’t entirely sure how to address both of them.

 **_Yes,_ **Venom responds a bit too enthusiastically.

“Yeah, uh, we’ve been working some things out so we’re not so annoyed with each other anymore.” Eddie continues shoving food in his mouth in hopes that it will make Anne and Dan stop asking him questions.

“It was good to see you on a date the other night,” Anne continues. “I’m glad to see you putting yourself out there, Eddie, but have you thought about what would happen if you actually got serious with someone? At what point do you tell them about Venom?”

Eddie laughs nervously. “No, it never even crossed my mind. A sentient being from another planet lives in my body, why would that be a problem in my dating life?”

“Ha ha, very funny,” Anne deadpans. “What about you, Venom? How do you feel about Eddie going out on dates?”

“Alright, this is a weirdly intimate—”

**_I encourage it. Humans need symbiosis with other humans, it’s not good for Eddie to only talk to me all the time._ **

Surprised, Anne says, “By symbiosis, you mean—”

**_Relationships._ **

“That’s very insightful of you, Venom,” Dan says.

Eddie bristles a bit at Dan’s patronizing tone, but he lets it go. It’s too early in his and Venom’s relationship for him to be valiantly sticking up for the alien over something so petty.

Anne and Dan continue pressing Eddie on his dating life, and he continues shoveling Italian food into his mouth, and Venom continues offering vaguely intimate sentiments that make Anne squint at the pair of them like she’s piecing together the truth. Or maybe Eddie’s just paranoid. 

After dinner, Eddie helps with cleaning up and then abruptly excuses himself to go take a shower. Once they’re alone in the guest bathroom, Venom asks him if he’s OK.

“Fuck, I don’t know. Being here is fucking nervewracking.” 

**_They are your friends. You should feel comfortable around them._ **

“Yeah, I get that, but it’s just—I don’t know, I don’t know how to tell them about us, so it’s just weird. I just need you to...Can you just do whatever you can to help keep me calm?” Eddie feels ridiculous for asking, but he can’t even hear himself over the sound of the shower, so it makes it slightly less painful to be so vulnerable.

Venom makes itself more solid within Eddie’s body, moving viscously between his organs and impossibly pulling at his blood vessels, expanding them to bring his blood pressure down. It crawls minutely, carefully, through his brain to help manage the anxiety. It also pulses inside him, forcing Eddie into a steady, rhythmic breathing pattern that he’s never been able to master on his own. 

“Thank you, baby,” he says, quietly, as warm water pours over him.

Eddie gets a full night of sleep for the first time in a week.

He wakes up before Anne and Dan in the morning, with Venom spooning him with six large tentacles and its face smashed into the crook of his neck. The sun hasn’t quite come up yet, and there is an annoyingly familiar scratching sound at the door.

Venom recedes slowly back into Eddie as he gets out of bed. He sleepily pulls on a t-shirt before he opens the door to reveal an agitated Mr. Belvedere and an impressive pile of ripped carpet at the threshold.

“Shit,” Eddie says with a sigh. 

He has a pot of coffee waiting and eggs cooking on the stove when Anne and Dan make their way into the kitchen within a few minutes of each other. Dan thanks him half a dozen times as he pours himself a tumbler full of coffee and hurries out the door in his scrubs. Eddie immediately tells Anne that he forgot to leave his door cracked open and that Mr. Belvedere tore up the carpet, to which Anne just waves him off and says not to worry about it. They talk for a few minutes while they eat breakfast together, Venom staying out of sight, and then Anne announces that she won’t be home until 6 p.m. before she heads out the door, too. 

Eddie sits at the kitchen table with his laptop and a mug of coffee for all of 10 minutes before giving up and deciding that it’s just not a good day to get any writing done. He has some freelance stuff that's been slow lately, and he’s dabbled with the idea of writing a book about the reporting he did for The Eddie Brock Report, but none of that is getting done in the silent kitchen of the apartment he thought he would share with his wife. 

**_If you’re not going to do any work today, why don’t we fuck?_ **

“Wow, that’s a little forward of you, you’re lucky I’m easy,” Eddie responds playfully.

Venom rumbles inside him, laughing, and it warms Eddie’s heart to know that the alien is learning his lame sense of humor.

In the guest bedroom, Venom strips Eddie down and ties him to the bed with tentacles wrapped around his wrists and around the headboard so that Eddie’s arms are stretched above his head while they kiss. 

“Make it hurt more,” Eddie says desperately between kisses. “Your tentacles feel too natural to me, tighten them around my wrists and extend my arms higher so it stings. Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. Better.”

Eddie remains in that position for the next couple hours as Venom fucks him, then sucks him off, then rides him. His arms are tired, his wrists burning with pain, but he knows Venom can feel the pain, too, and that it won’t let Eddie hurt any worse. With Venom, Eddie feels both terrified and completely safe; he knows that Venom could hurt him or kill him very easily, but he also knows that Venom will take care of him and protect him no matter what. 

After his third orgasm, Eddie breathlessly says, “OK, let me go,” and his arms are immediately released and drop uselessly down to the bed. 

Venom slithers small tendrils over Eddie’s biceps, elbows, wrists, tending delicately to his aches and pains while Eddie catches his breath.

Eddie orders fast food for lunch and eats it on the back porch while scrolling through news stories on his phone. The local news is still covering the disappearance of the cops, and the SFPD’s Twitter account has daily updates with assurances that they are making progress. Most of their tweets have been ratioed by lefties repeatedly asking “who cares.” One disreputable news source has picked up the phone camera video of Venom holding a ball of police car, but they didn’t connect the dots that the disappearance of the cops and the shadowy monster thing are related. Still, Eddie starts to feel anxious the more he reads, so he exits out of everything and asks Venom to take over eating the food. He once again texts Sol and receives no response.

Later that afternoon, Eddie falls asleep in the middle of explaining some stupid human thing to Venom, and when he wakes up, disoriented and unsure of where he is, Venom has its usual set of tentacles wrapped tightly around his body. Eddie hears someone moving about the apartment, so he stumbles out of bed and takes a trip to the bathroom before going out to the kitchen to find Anne chopping vegetables.

“I texted you to let you know I was making dinner. Because you didn’t respond, you don’t get to complain about what I’m making,” she says.

“Sorry. Fell asleep.”

She huffs a laugh. “Yeah, I saw that. Venom wraps around you like that while you’re sleeping?”

Eddie’s heart drops to his stomach. “Um. Yeah, it’s, uh, nice. Helps me sleep.”

Anne keeps chopping vegetables, keeps smiling like Eddie is endlessly amusing. “Do you switch back and forth like we used to do? Or are you strictly a little spoon now?”

**_What does she mean by "little spoon"?_ **

“She means, you know, the way you hold me when I sleep. The one doing the holding is the big spoon, the one being held is the little spoon.”

 **_That’s adorable,_ **Venom says at the same time that Anne bursts out laughing. 

“That’s good you have someone to cuddle with, I know how much you love that.”

It’s on the tip of his tongue to tell her the truth, that they do a lot more than cuddling. But then Venom is in his head telling him it would like to try being the little spoon, and Eddie is distracted trying to work out the logistics of that. 

Later that night, Venom shapes itself like a pillow for Eddie to hold in his arms and between his legs, and it’s not as nice as the other way around, but it does remind him of being with Anne. Venom feels small in his arms, the way Anne did, and it makes Eddie feel bigger and stronger than he actually is. He asks Venom to form into more of a small human shape, and he falls asleep with his face buried in its malleable neck. 

Eddie once again gets a full, restful night of sleep and wakes up on his stomach, with Venom still mostly human-shaped beneath him, its arms wrapped around his back so his face is pushed against its chest. When Eddie lifts his head, he realizes he’s actually squeezed between two breasts, like the ones Venom had when they kissed in the woods. Before he has the chance to grab one to see what it feels like, Anne clears her throat from the hallway. 

“I know I have to keep the door open, but that doesn’t mean you have to watch me sleep, Annie,” Eddie teases even as his heart races at being caught in such a vulnerable position. Venom retreats back into his body as Eddie rolls to the side of the bed. The only thing he’s wearing is a loose-fitting pair of boxers, and he can feel Anne’s eyes roaming. “Also, I know I look good, you don’t have to gawk, either.”

“I’m not! I just, it’s so interesting the way he—it moves with you. Like yesterday it looked like an octopus was spooning you, and today, was it—was that a woman’s body?”

Eddie stands and stretches his arms above his head, lengthening his torso, because despite whatever Anne says, he knows she is checking him out and he might be insecure as hell, but he’s also vain. 

“Yeah, I guess it was imitating a female form, I don’t know. Vee, was that what you were doing?”

**_Yes. I like finding new shapes to see what you enjoy. You slept very well between my breasts._ **

Eddie blushes but is grateful that Anne couldn’t hear the answer. “It says yeah, that’s what it was doing.”

Anne smiles, warm and knowing. “Well, it sure looked comfortable. There’s coffee in the pot, can you feed the cat this afternoon? I won’t be home until late, so you’re on your own for dinner. Dan might come over really late, too, after his shift. Stay safe, Eddie, OK?”

Eddie smiles as he scoots past her to get to the guest bathroom. “Thanks, Mom, I’ll try my best.”

Eddie once again starts his day by trying to get work done and gives up after just a few minutes. He sits out on the porch and, again, stresses himself out while scrolling through the news. More reputable sources have picked up the footage of Venom, and the guy who took the video has done a few interviews. Eddie texts Sol and attempts to come across as more casual than his previous texts. Sol of course does not answer.

By late morning Eddie is feeling antsy and caged in, so he takes his bike on a long drive and stops by Mrs. Chen’s store to pick up something for lunch. 

When he walks in the store, Mrs. Chen looks at him like she’s seen a ghost.

“Uh-oh, what’d I do?” he asks.

“You’re on the news, Eddie! What are you doing here?” she whisper-shouts.

“C’mon, Mrs. C., you know it’s not _me_ on the news.” He tosses a couple bags of tater tots into his basket and avoids Mrs. Chen’s gaze. “Have the police been by here?”

“I’ve seen them drive up and down the street, but they haven’t come in here. I won’t tell them anything.”

“I know that. Thank you.”

“You need to be more careful, Eddie. My niece said you showed the alien in her shop, and then she said that big man who works with her asked her a bunch of serious questions about you, and I think you need to—”

“Whoa, whoa, what kind of serious questions?” Eddie interrupts, walking up to the counter and looking her in the eye.

“I don’t know, Eddie, ask Marie.” She waves him off. “You’re not invincible, you know, you can’t just eat every problem.”

Eddie worries his lip between his teeth then sets his basket up on the counter. “I’ll call Marie. And I won’t come back here for a little bit, I don’t mean to involve you in anything.”

Mrs. Chen nods and gives him a hard look as she rings him up. 

When Eddie gets back to Anne’s apartment after recklessly speeding through the streets of San Francisco, he scarfs down his food so quickly that he gets a stomach ache before Venom can help with digestion. He considers taking some anxiety meds but decides to try to nap instead. Venom is quiet as it soothes Eddie with a full-body massage, and when several minutes pass and Eddie is still wide awake, he grabs one of Venom’s tendrils and leads it toward his cock. 

Venom strips his clothes off for him and flips him to his stomach, holding him facedown on the bed as it works a tentacle into his ass. It opens Eddie up differently than usual. Instead of imitating fingers, it narrows the tentacle to easily slide in and then it expands like a balloon being inflated. It’s a weird sensation that sends a shiver down to Eddie’s toes, and he has to twist the duvet in his fists to stay grounded. When Venom starts slowly moving the tentacle in and out, it feels bigger than anything Eddie’s ever felt inside him. His dick is pressed into the mattress, neglected, but he’s not worried about it. He knows Venom will take care of him.

Venom continues the slow rhythm, pushing in and out, in and out, until Eddie’s brain goes a little foggy. Just as he feels a tendril moving internally down through his stomach and toward his crotch, there is a surprised scream from the hallway.

Eddie jumps and nearly rolls off the bed, but Venom catches him and brings him to his feet before hiding back inside his body. “Anne! Wait!” Eddie yells as he runs into the hallway, completely naked.

“Eddie,” Anne yells breathlessly. “What the _fuck?”_ She backs up until she hits the kitchen counter. 

“Uh, I can explain,” he says, and he stands several feet away from her since she seems scared of him. He doesn’t bother to try to cover his nakedness; Anne’s eyes are glued to his face anyway. “I tried to tell you the other day, but you were so worried about me, you know, and I didn’t want to make it weird with me and Vee staying here—”

“Oh yeah, because it’s definitely not weird now!”

“I’m sorry! We thought you would be gone all day, and I have to keep the door open for the cat—”

“You’re blaming my cat.”

“—And I mean, are you surprised? You’ve seen how we...sleep.”

Anne plants her hands on her hips. “You’re asking me if I’m surprised to see my ex, naked in bed, with a giant tentacle in his ass?”

Eddie blinks.

**_Tell her the truth._ **

“Which truth, what are you talking about?” Eddie asks Venom, looking down at the floor so Anne knows he isn’t addressing her.

**_That I love you._ **

“That you what?” Eddie asks stupidly, even as his heart hammers in his chest.

**_I thought you knew. I’ve been obvious about it._ **

“What’s going on, Eddie?” Anne interrupts. “What’s it saying?”

“Um, just that—look, Annie, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. It’s kind of hard to open up about being in a, you know, relationship with an alien. I think I’m just embarrassed. And scared.”

“Scared? Is Venom hurting you, Eddie? Are you—”

“No! I mean scared like how I’m scared of, like, everything. Venom and I are in a relationship. A pretty serious one. And now that I'm saying it out loud, it seems really stupid.”

“No.” She takes a step toward him, her entire demeanor changing. “It’s not stupid, it makes perfect sense. And if you need anything at all, you can tell me. You can talk to me about anything, Eddie. I’m here for you.”

He nods and avoids making eye contact with her.

“Eddie?”

“Hmm?”

“Go put some clothes on.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie and Venom's bond grows stronger, even as Eddie continues his self-sabotage.

Eddie gives a fake name when he calls the tattoo shop. 

He shows up in a baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses. The second he walks in the door, Marie’s voice carries from the back, “Fucking hell, what are you _doing_ here, you dumbass?”

Eddie ducks his head, but he feels everybody looking at him anyway. Before he looks back up again, Marie is right in front of him, pushing at his chest.

“Eddie. Do not tell me you’re my last appointment of the day, I swear to god,” she whispers forcefully. 

“Ow, Marie, come on—I’m, you know, I just need something normal. Please,” he says through gritted teeth. 

She stares at him, her pierced eyebrows furrowed. “You better not be here to pester Solomon, because first of all, he’s not even here, and second of all, he doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“I’m just here to get a tattoo, Marie, for fuck’s sake.”

She narrows her eyes. “Why.”

**_I told you this was a bad idea._ **

Eddie flails his hands nervously, then tucks them under his armpits and shrugs. “Look, I’m already here. Just hide me in your little office in the back or whatever, I just want a goddamn tattoo. Goddamn it.”

Marie sighs her frustration but leads him to the back anyway. She’s short with him as he picks out one of her designs—the face of a grizzly bear that he’s adding to the somewhat haphazard collection of faces covering his back—and although he purposely chose to have his back tattooed so he could sit backward on the chair, facing away from her, he still begins talking to her the moment the needle presses into his skin. 

“So, uh, your aunt said that you said that Sol was—”

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

**_She said "no."_ **

“You said you were here to get a tattoo, that’s all you’re doing, buddy,” Marie replies.

“Why are you mad at me? What did I do to _you?”_ Eddie asks petulantly. 

“Hmm, well, in the month since I saw you last, you broke Solomon, you went AWOL, and for some fucking reason the cops have been by here twice to ask me questions. And now here you are.”

**_That’s not good._ **

“What do you mean I broke Sol?”

**_No, Eddie, the cops are more pressing—ask her about the cops._ **

“Look, Eddie, I love you, but I’m assuming whatever issues you’re having is because of, you know.” She drops her voice. “The thing inside you. Solomon skipped town after the first time the cops came by, that’s all I’ll say. Obviously we haven’t told them anything, especially since you vacated your fucking apartment, so we really don’t know anything.”

“How’d you know I—”

“Solomon went by there, dude. He was gonna tell you to stop trying to contact him, because he didn’t want any kind of connection to you other than the fact that you’re in this shop all the fucking time, but he didn’t want, like, a paper trail I guess. That’s all I know! Stop asking questions.”

“But—”

“No! I know fuck-all else, so stop asking. If you can get that alien out of you, the sooner the better—”

Venom pushes its head out of the back of Eddie’s so it can look Marie in the eye as it says, **_No. Eddie is mine. I will protect him._ **

“OK! First of all!” she whisper-shouts. “I just messed up a line, and I’m not fucking fixing it, so now your bear is gonna have a scar on its face. Second of all, this is exactly what I mean! Get this creepy Harry Potter bullshit out of here before it gets you killed!”

“Vee, c’mon, stay hidden. You know we gotta be more careful.”

Venom tucks itself away back inside Eddie with a possessive growl.

“I can’t get rid of it, Marie,” Eddie mumbles. “We’re, uh, too intertwined.” He closes his eyes and adds, “We’re also, um, kind of in a relationship.”

 _"What?”_ Marie yells as she turns her tattoo machine off and slides her stool in front of Eddie. Her mouth hangs open as she scans his face. “Jesus, you’re not kidding. Gross, dude.”

**_Tell her it’s not gross, Eddie. Tell her I love you._ **

“It’s not as weird as it sounds,” Eddie mutters.

“Wait, what were you—you went on a date with Sol though? What were you trying to do, bring him into some weird alien threesome?” Marie waves her arms as she talks, her tattoo machine still in her hand. 

“No, I wasn’t even gonna tell him about Vee, at least, not at first. I told you, human relationships are just weird now. I can’t get close to anybody without Venom being involved in some way, you know. And it’s with me for everything, every single part of my life. You can’t understand how intimate that is, for somebody to be physically connected to every part—every cell of your body, to the point where I can’t remember what my body felt like before it was there.” Eddie stops, catches his breath. 

Venom constricts inside him, hugging his muscle tissue.

“OK. Gross.” Marie slides the stool back around behind Eddie to continue her work.

“You haven’t, uh, told anybody, have you?” Eddie asks.

“No, I’m not an idiot. You know what, it’s my aunt you should worry about. If she told me, then she probably told other people. _You_ need to stop fucking telling people, buddy. The cops are on your ass for whatever it is you’ve been doing.” Marie stops, both the talking and the tattooing, then starts back up again. “And hey, you know what, don’t try to come back here again anytime soon or else I’m tattooing a dick on your back.”

“Alright. I won’t.”

Later, as they leave the shop, Venom physically stops Eddie and turns him around to face Marie, then it puts Eddie’s hand on her shoulder and seeps tendrils into her.

“Whoa, what—” Marie cuts herself off, her eyes unfocusing and her face relaxing until Venom pulls itself back into Eddie.

Eddie quickly removes his hand from her shoulder and apologizes.

“No, no, it’s alright,” Marie responds, quieter than usual. “It’s OK. You’re good. Stay safe, Eddie. And—and you too, Vee.”

Once they’re outside, Eddie immediately asks Venom what it said to Marie.

**_I didn’t say anything to her._ **

“Oh god, what did you _do_ to her?” Eddie asks as he climbs onto his bike.

**_I let her feel part of our shared body, and our shared consciousness._ **

“Our what?”

Venom vibrates like a sigh inside Eddie. **_You know that there’s my body, and there’s your body, but you must also realize we have combined into one whole. We share thoughts, feelings—my substance and your cells are mixing together to create a new thing entirely. You said it yourself to Marie, how connected we are._ **

Eddie nearly swerves off the road, but Venom moves through his hands to keep the bike steady. “A new thing, you mean, like, I won’t be me and you won’t be you anymore, we’ll just be some new kind of monster-human hybrid creature? Is that what you mean?” 

**_No,_ ** Venom answers calmly. **_We are still you and me, like I just said, but the longer we stay together and the closer we become, the more difficult it will be to separate us, and the stronger we will become. You already understand this on some level, like right now as we’re driving, we are both in control to keep us safe. You can feel it._ **

Eddie grips the handlebars tighter and feels Venom beneath the surface of his skin, moving with him, every twitch of the muscles in his hands synchronized with Venom’s threads. “But you also said, uh, we share thoughts? How does that…?”

**_You don’t have to use your voice anymore to talk to me. Come on, try._ **

“Um…” _Hello?_ Eddie tries.

**_Hi._ **

_So you’re saying I’ve been yelling over the sound of my engine for no reason?_

**_I actually wasn’t sure this would work until I went into Marie. Before today, I could only see pictures and memories when you showed them to me._ **

_Does this mean you can read all my thoughts now?_

**_No. Again, we are still separate beings._ **

_Right._

**_Do you feel your new tattoo?_ **

Eddie shifts and feels the pull of his jacket against his back, but no pain. _No, did you already heal it?_

**_Yes, and you didn’t notice. See? You’re growing used to my body as if it’s your own._ **

_Awesome._

Eddie tries not to think too hard about this new development, because then he will have to think about his identity and whether he is losing it by fusing with an alien, or whether it’s just changing into something new the way identities often do in relationships—both options are terrifying to him. At least he feels confident that one part of him can’t change: that he’s a coward.

When they get back to Anne’s, Eddie barely has the key in the lock before Anne bangs open the door and yanks him inside. 

“Where have you been?” she asks as she releases him in the apartment and bolts the door shut behind them.

“Oh my god, Anne, please—”

“No, Eddie! _You_ please! What’d you leave for this time?” She crowds him back toward the kitchen. “Something important enough to risk your life? And Venom’s?” 

**_You should tell her the truth, show her the tattoo._ **

_Why the fuck would I do that?_

“I can’t stay in your apartment all day every day, I just can’t do it,” Eddie replies.

“You have to, Eddie. Please. Just for another week or so.”

He removes his hat, runs his hand up through his hair and has the fleeting thought that he needs a haircut. “This was _our_ apartment, Annie. It’s not exactly easy for me to be here, you know.”

Her face softens. “Oh.” 

Her pity makes Eddie squirm. He tries to turn away to escape back to the guest bedroom, but Anne sits at the kitchen table and keeps talking.

“Honey, I thought you had moved on.”

Resigned, Eddie sits down across from her and folds his hands on the table, looking down at them and cracking his knuckles as he talks. “Uh, it’s just that I loved living here with you, and so being here as a hostage, you know, it’s not—it’s not awesome.”

“C’mon, you’re more like a fugitive than a hostage.”

**_Mention the flowers. On the walls. What’s the word—wallpaper._ **

_Again, why the fuck would I do that?_

“Eddie?” Anne asks.

“Hmm?” He looks up at her, eyebrows raised. 

“What’s it saying?”

**_TELL her._ **

He sighs. “You didn’t change anything after I moved out. Like, the floral wallpaper I picked out? In the bedrooms? It’s just very...me, in here.”

A smile pulls at her lips. “Well, yeah, I love that wallpaper. I use it as a gauge.”

“What?”

 **_She said she_** —

_Oh my god, stop doing that. Stop._

“When I started, um, going on dates after we broke up, there were two guys I went out with just casually before I met Dan, and both of them made fun of how ‘girly’ my apartment was. When I mentioned that you had picked out the wallpaper, both of them basically reacted with some version of ‘I see why you broke up with him.’ Actually, one of them asked if I broke up with you because I was worried you would run off with a man.” She grimaces and shakes her head. “So yeah, thanks for stopping me from sleeping with those guys.”

Eddie huffs a laugh. “What did Dan say? The first time he came over, I mean.”

She smiles, wistful and open. “He said it was warm and bright in here, that it felt safe. I told him you and I had decorated it together and that most of it was you, and he said he could feel the love put into it and was glad I preserved it.”

**_That’s very nice of him._ **

_I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic._

**_I am, but it_ ** **is** **_very nice of him._ **

“So, uh, that’s why everything’s the same? Because Dan likes it?” Eddie asks.

“Well, actually, when he said that I very nearly changed everything right away. I was still so pissed at you, I couldn’t deal with hearing anything nice about you. But—I don’t know, Dan was right. It does feel safe here.”

**_Our apartment is dark and ugly. We should make it feel safe whenever we go back._ **

“Eddie?” 

“Hmm?”

Anne peers at him curiously. “What’s changed? I can tell Venom’s talking to you, but I don’t know. Your face looks different.”

“Oh, um, well it turns out I can now talk to it in my head.” Eddie taps his index finger to his temple twice. “But I kind of have to concentrate to do it. Still getting used to it, you know.”

“Oh, wow. That’s kind of weird. Do you think that’s—does that mean your relationship is going well?”

Venom emerges from Eddie’s left shoulder. **_Yes._ **

“Oh hi, Vee.”

**_Hi, Annie. Eddie and I have a very strong bond. But you were right when you said he hasn’t moved on. He still loves you._ **

Eddie groans and presses the heels of his hands to his closed eyes. 

“Well, I still love him, too,” Anne answers rationally. “It’s a different kind of love than what we had before, but it’s still good.”

Venom gently headbutts Eddie. **_Eddie, tell her._ **

He glares at the symbiote. “We’re discussing this later. You've gotta stop forcing me into these conversations,” he whispers before turning back to Anne. “I do still love you, Annie. Like, in the painful way. And yeah, I haven’t moved on. That’s why it hurts to be stuck here.”

“But, I don't—you’re happy now. I see how you two are, Venom gives you so much more than I ever could. We’re friends, Eddie.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know. It’s just different with Vee. Like it said before, I still need, you know, human relationships. A partner would be nice, but obviously they’d have to be cool with Vee, too, and I’m just not gonna find that anytime soon.” He gestures to the apartment. “Especially not when I’m here, avoiding the police and spending my free time with my ex that I’m still in love with.”

Her pity returns. “I’m sorry. If I had known, I would’ve given you time. We didn’t have to become friends so quickly, you know. And obviously I can find somewhere else for you to stay, give you some space.”

Eddie and Venom both say “no” at the same time. They look at each other, then Venom recedes back inside Eddie to let him handle the rest of the conversation. 

“You’re the only one who really gets Vee,” Eddie admits. “I was so stressed when we were sneaking around, I can’t, uh, go stay with someone else and have to sneak around like that again.”

**_It was kind of thrilling, too, though._ **

_I have anxiety, babe. Thrilling’s not always fun._

“OK. I understand, I think. But, Eddie, you know we’re not getting back together, right? You’ve accepted that?”

Eddie swallows a lump in his throat. “It’s, um, Venom that struggles more with—that.”

“What do you mean?”

“It wishes you and I were together. I’ve told 'em it's not gonna happen, but. It’s kind of hopelessly romantic.”

Before Anne can respond, Venom moves Eddie’s hand to grip her wrist, and Eddie can feel this time the sensation of their shared essence being demonstrated to Anne. 

“Oh,” she says, a little glazed over just like Marie. “Oh, I see. You both long for me.”

“Well, yeah, you know, shared consciousness,” Eddie mumbles. “I’m sorry, really. You’re happy with Dan, and I like Dan. I’m not trying to cause any problems.”

“I know, sweetie.” She pats his hand, rubbing the pad of her thumb gently over his skin. “I’ll try not to pester you so much, but I really do need you to be careful right now, alright? Let’s just focus on keeping you two safe for now.”

“Yeah.”

Not wanting to deal with the fallout from the conversation, Eddie stays in the guest bedroom for the rest of the evening, only coming out to heat up some leftovers late that night after Anne has gone to bed. While they eat, Eddie and Venom argue about the way Venom interjects itself into conversations, and they don’t exactly resolve the issue before Venom lays Eddie out on the bed and gives him a rim job. 

Eddie has his eyes closed and is comfortably pressed into the mattress, very nearly on the edge of sleep as Venom’s tongue works its way in and out of him, when he hears Dan quietly enter the apartment.

 _God, how late is it?_ Eddie asks.

**_Very late. Sometimes he gets here in the middle of the night._ **

_Hmm._

Eddie remembers how hard it was to work out his and Anne’s schedules when he had his show and she was at the firm, and how often they fought over not being able to see each other enough. He is thinking about how difficult it must be for Anne to date a doctor as Venom probes insistently at his prostate until he comes. 

The next morning, Eddie wakes up, naked and tangled in a pile of tentacles, to the sound of a rapid knock on the front door.

Anne, in her pajamas, pushes Eddie's door halfway open and whispers, “Stay the fuck in here,” before she slams it shut. 

Eddie scrambles out of bed so he can press his ear to his door. He pulls at Venom's threads, sending mental images to it of a blanket so Venom forms itself around Eddie as such. 

_Can you hear them?_

**_My hearing is the same as yours._ **

Eddie sighs, frustrated. He can tell that it’s cops at the door, and he hears Anne talking in a measured tone, but he can’t parse out anything anyone is saying. After a minute, the voices get closer as if the cops are in the apartment, and Eddie frantically looks around for a place to hide.

 **_I can jump us out of the window if we have to,_ ** Venom supplies. **_Although there could be cops out on the street as well, and it’s broad daylight._ **

As Eddie tries to make a decision, he hears Anne loudly thank the cops as she ushers them out. A couple minutes pass before she knocks on Eddie’s door.

The cat runs into the room, followed by Anne. She makes a face at Eddie’s blanket before realizing it’s Venom, then she makes a completely different, more amused face. 

“They’re looking for you, obviously,” she says as she sits on the edge of the bed and crosses her legs.

Eddie sits next to her. The cat jumps on his lap and is unfazed when blanket-Venom probes gently at him. “What’d you tell them?”

The cat starts kneading Eddie’s thigh.

**_What is this cat doing?_ **

_It’s just a cat thing, don’t worry about it._

“Well, they asked some questions about me, which I answered honestly,” Anne replies. “But then they asked if I had been in contact with you recently, and I told them I wasn’t going to answer any questions about you.”

“Hm. Yeah, that’s good you didn’t lie. And they just left after that?”

“Well, they kind of implied that they might come back with a warrant to search the place, but I think they were just trying to scare me.” She shrugs. “I recognized both of the guys from court, they’re idiots.”

“You’re, um, acting pretty chill about this.”

She leans sideways toward him, bumping her shoulder against blanket-Venom. “I’m trying to hold it together so I don’t freak you out. I haven’t been—I haven’t exactly been conscious of your anxiety lately.”

“Oh, well, um, thank you. And Vee helps with that a lot, so. I’m alright.”

Anne steals Mr. Belvedere from Eddie’s lap; one of his claws is digging into Venom, and Venom has several small tendrils buried in his fur, so it takes some tugging to separate them. 

“I have to get ready for work,” Anne says as she hugs Mr. Belvedere to her chest. “I’ll text you to let you know if I see any cop cars around. Keep the blinds closed, obviously.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Eddie nudges at Venom to get it to unwrap itself. He stands and stretches then bends over to pick up a pair of boxers from the floor as Venom recedes. 

“Excuse me, what’s that on your back?” Anne says from the doorway.

“Aw, shit. Uh, I got a tattoo yesterday.”

“Eddie, Jesus Christ.”

“I know.”

**_I told him it was a bad idea, Annie!_ **

“Thanks for always being on my side, babe,” Eddie says, annoyed, once they’re alone. Then, _We have to get out of here._

 **_I know you’re worried about us becoming more like each other until we lose our identities entirely, so this question might scare you, but I have to ask._ ** Venom changes its voice to imitate Eddie. **_Why the fuck would we do that?_ **

_Because this is stupid! If the cops are hanging out here, that means Anne’s in trouble, too. We gotta go._

**_And where are we gonna go?_ **

_We should check out my apartment, just to see what’s going on over there. I know how to go unnoticed, we’ll be fine._

**_You mean wearing a hat and sunglasses?_ **

_Shut up._

Five minutes after Anne leaves, she texts Eddie simply, _“one car,”_ so Venom surreptitiously extends one small tendril out through the crown molding of the building and confirms that two cops are sitting in a parked car barely a block down the hill. 

After a brief and ultimately unfruitful argument, Eddie and Venom leave the apartment with the hat and sunglasses method and with Venom’s suggestion of contouring itself to create a different body shape for Eddie. Venom wanted to bulk him up, but Eddie rebutted that more muscle would make him look ridiculous and more conspicuous, so instead he’s walking down the street with Venom acting as a beer belly under his sweatshirt. He leaves his motorcycle parked in Anne’s garage and takes the cable car instead.

An unmanned cop car is parked on Eddie’s street. He sneaks around the back of the building and climbs the outside stairs up to his apartment, and he makes it inside without seeing another person. Strangely enough, it feels good to be home in his dark, dank apartment, so he takes his time showering and packing up more clothes to take back to Anne’s, then he takes all the food he left in his freezer—two pizzas, tater tots, party size lasagna—and painstakingly cooks them one serving at a time in the toaster oven. There’s a rap on his door as he’s eating pizza.

**_Those are cops._ **

_Yeah._

Venom seizes Eddie’s legs to stop him from going to the door. **_What are you doing._ **

_Just let me handle this, sweetheart._

Venom surprisingly gives control back to Eddie. He opens the door and immediately recognizes one of the cops—another white guy he investigated for use of unnecessary force, unlawful searches, and, of course, filing false reports. 

“Holy shit, it’s Eddie Brock,” the guy, Officer Miller, says. 

Eddie blinks at him.

“Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?” the other guy asks in a bored tone. Eddie’s never seen him before; he looks young, tall, light-skinned Black guy. He says his name is Hinson.

“I’m probably gonna use my right to remain silent, but sure, go ahead,” Eddie replies without letting them inside. He leans against the door frame and crosses his ankles and his arms.

They ask Eddie to state his name and confirm that he lives in the apartment, then Miller asks where he’s been and why he hasn’t been home the past couple weeks, which Eddie doesn’t answer. They ask about the missing cops, Eddie says nothing. They show him the video of Venom with the bundle of police car and ask if Eddie recognizes the street, he says nothing. They then show him a shaky camera phone video he’s never seen before, of him on his bike flying through the streets of San Francisco with blurs of tentacles reaching every which way while SUVs tail him.

“Right. Yeah. I was infected with a parasite I got from Carlton Drake,” Eddie says casually. “You know, the guy who blew up in a spaceship accident recently? It was all over the news, guys, my old station did a piece, actually, explaining what happened.”

They try to pivot to asking him about the parasite, but Eddie shuts down again. They ask him where he was the night the cops disappeared, he doesn’t answer. Hinson continues to sound bored, but Miller gets increasingly frustrated until there is sweat beading across his forehead. He keeps shifting his feet forward, crowding Eddie, but Venom is working overtime to keep Eddie calm, so he hasn’t moved from his comfortable position leaned against the door frame. 

Hinson gives up, sighs, folds his notebook up and tucks it into his shirt pocket. Then he says, “Here’s what we think, Mr. Brock. We think that parasite isn’t a parasite and that you still have it, somehow. We think you have something to do with our coworkers going missing, and that the shadowy monster-looking thing in that video is involved, too.” His face changes, a little less bored and a little more annoyed. “We think you might have some kind of low-level superpower and that you consider yourself a vigilante of sorts.”

Eddie scoffs at them. “Wow, I’m so glad so much of the city’s budget is dedicated to this very important and serious police work.” He starts to shut the door. “You guys have a nice rest of your day.”

Miller puts a hand to the door to stop it. He glares at Eddie as he says, “We’ll be back with a warrant for your arrest.”

“Nice to see you still suck at your job, Miller. Bye!” With Venom’s added strength, Eddie is able to easily shut the door even with Miller’s hand still on it.

Eddie shuts himself in the bathroom and does some deep breathing with Venom’s help. Once he feels like he has calmed down enough, he says, “I need a fucking drink.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will pick up exactly where this one left off and will hopefully have a bit more action....I promise this buildup is going somewhere. Also I wasn't originally gonna have the SFPD become the antagonists, but, you know, the current political climate got me taking my frustrations out in a goddamn Venom fic lmao.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie has a one-night stand, gets another tattoo, has some serious conversations with Anne and Dan.

**_Eddie. I don’t think we should be here._ **

_It’ll be fine, trust me._

Eddie takes a seat at the bar and fidgets with his hands until the bartender comes over. He orders two shots of Jameson and a PBR and ignores Venom’s complaining as he drinks as quickly as possible. He signals to the bartender for two more shots while he nurses his beer.

 **_I won’t be much use if you get us drunk,_ **Venom says during shot number six.

_Us? You’ll get drunk, too?_

**_You really are very oblivious to how our bodies work._ **

A woman sits next to Eddie and waves at the bartender, pointing to Eddie’s PBR and then holding up two fingers. She says, “I miss seeing you on TV every day, but actually, you’re better-looking in person.”

The bartender sets the beers down in front of them, and Eddie thanks the woman as he picks his up.

“I’m Joanna,” she says before taking a drink. “Why are you alone at a shitty bar at 6 p.m.?”

“Oh, um, bad decision making,” Eddie responds as he assesses her. She looks to be about his age, light brown skin, plump and curvy, with curly dark hair and dark eyes to match. “What about you?” he asks.

**_You’re attracted to her. Is it her breasts? She has large breasts._ **

“I just come here after work sometimes because I’m a divorced empty nester.”

_It’s rude to talk about a woman’s tits like this, but yeah, they’re nice._

“My daughter moved into her dorm a few weeks ago, I’ve been a wreck about it,” Joanna continues.

“Drinking to cope, huh?” Eddie says stupidly. Then, “What do you do for a living?”

She looks at him, her eyes flicking down to his mouth and then back up before she answers, “I’m an orthodontist.”

“That’s hot.” Eddie blinks, stares at his beer. “Sorry, I think I’m a little drunk.”

**_We are._ **

“I live right around the corner,” she says.

“That’s a bit forward of you.”

“I mean, I can take you to dinner first, sober you up a little if it’ll make you feel better.”

“No, no, I was hoping to get laid tonight.” He digs in his pocket for his wallet and sets a few bills on the countertop. “You can absolutely take advantage of me.”

 **_I can’t believe the way you make being pathetic seem endearing,_ **Venom says affectionately. 

_Thank you._

“Whoa, you’re shorter than you look on TV,” Joanna says as they walk out of the bar together.

Eddie turns to face her; she’s about six feet tall and wearing heels, so he is definitely looking up at her as he asks innocently, “Is that a problem?”

She smiles at him. “No.”

**_Are you going to tell her about me?_ **

_No. You alright with this?_

**_Yes, I’ll stay out of the way._ **

Joanna leads Eddie to a modest two-bedroom apartment and does not offer him a drink or small talk before kissing him senseless and taking him to her room. There are two large dogs asleep on her bed, which she wakes up and shoos away, and they both happily bump against Eddie and lick his hands on the way out the door.

 **_I like pets. We should get a pet,_ **Venom says.

_OK, I’m about to have sex, so maybe let’s keep the irrelevant comments to a minimum for the time being._

**_How long has it been since you had sex with another human?_ **

_Long enough. Shut up._

Eddie is a bit clumsy removing his clothes, distracted watching Joanna strip down to a plain black bra and panties. She has roses and sunflowers tattooed in black ink across her torso and under her breasts, and she waits until Eddie is fully naked before unclasping her bra and dropping it to the floor. A brilliantly white smile splits her face as she closes the short distance between them. Eddie, already achingly hard, immediately pulls her panties down and rubs his fingers against her lips as they kiss. He bends his knees and hunches his shoulders a bit so he can get to her from a lower angle, but even so, she is letting him take lead, and he is extremely tempted to—

**_Go ahead, pick her up. We’re very strong._ **

_It’s just not very realistic that I’d be able to do that on my own, though. She’s a lot_ — _she’s bigger than me._

**_So it will be even more impressive to her. Do it._ **

Relenting, Eddie hooks his hands behind Joanna's knees and easily hoists her up around his waist and walks her back to the bed without breaking the kiss. She laughs in surprise, then mumbles that nobody has done that to her in 20 years. 

**_Told you._ **

Joanna is unbelievably soft. Eddie liberally kisses and squeezes her breasts, then moves his mouth and hands down her soft belly, taking his time before reaching between her legs. He opens her up with his fingers and eats her out simultaneously, and she comes with a shudder then presses both her hands to the back of his head, making him keep his mouth on her, while she breathlessly explains that she can have a second orgasm if he just slows down for a minute. Unable to help himself, he moves his left hand up her body and grabs a handful of boob while he works his tongue slowly against her clit. She comes so hard the second time that her body pushes his fingers right out of her. 

**_You’re very good at this. She’s very good at this. I need to...I may need to stop watching, I feel overwhelmed._ **

_Fuck, you alright?_

**_Yes. I’m just going to try not to feel what you feel so I don’t lose control._ **

_OK, just let me know if I need to stop._

As he puts a condom on, he feels Venom bury itself deeper inside him until Eddie feels alone in his own body. He hates it, but he’s too turned on to worry about it. He lines himself up over Joanna, sighs in relief once inside her, then he does most of the work until he comes and collapses on top of her. He buries his face between her breasts and cups one of them, lazily rubbing his thumb over her nipple until it hardens under his touch, then he sucks it into his mouth and swirls his tongue around it while she pulls on his hair.

Venom slowly resurfaces; Eddie releases tension in his shoulders that he didn’t realize was there. 

_You OK?_

**_I’m OK._ **

_Missed you._

Venom doesn’t respond. Eddie focuses back on Joanna, continues his ministrations of her nipples, traces her stretch marks with his fingertips. 

**_I think I can imitate this for you. I’d like to be able to, since you’re clearly enjoying yourself._ **

_Baby, are you jealous?_

**_No. Shut up._ **

“Are you hungry?” Joanna asks, still carding a hand through his hair. 

Eddie lays his cheek against her bosom. “I’m alright. You?”

“I have some leftovers in the fridge. But what I’m really asking is if you want to stay over.” 

He lifts his head and smiles down at her. “Yeah, that would be cool.”

Her eyebrows knit together. She takes his chin between her thumb and forefinger and says, “You know, all it would take is a few months of braces to fix that bottom row.”

**_I don’t know what braces are, but I could fix them in two seconds if you wanted._ **

“Ouch, you know what, I’m very sensitive about that,” Eddie teases. 

_I don’t want them fixed, please don’t do anything to them._

The dogs both start barking in the other room. Venom tenses, making Eddie jump, and Joanna laughs at him.

“That’s probably just my neighbor getting home from work, sometimes they bark when they hear people in the hall,” she explains. Then she kisses his forehead and shimmies out from underneath him. “C’mon, let’s get something to eat.”

**_I don’t think that’s a neighbor._ **

_Yeah, I don’t think so either. Do I have the same heightened senses as you?_

**_Yes. I thought we’d been over this._ **

Eddie quickly pulls his boxer briefs back on as he walks over to the window to peek through the curtains. There is a nondescript-looking sedan parked on the street with a plain-clothes cop sitting in it. Eddie recognizes her from a particularly nasty episode of his show where he had footage of cops tearing apart tents at a homeless camp—footage he caught on his phone because he was hanging out there with Maria and some of her friends when the cops pulled up. 

_She would have a partner with her. Do you think that’s who’s in the hallway?_

**_Yeah. They’re just standing in the hall._ **

_They’re probably getting the address to come back later. Fuck._

Eddie picks his jeans up off the floor and digs in his pockets for his phone so he can text Anne to let her know that he has somewhere to stay for the night. He doesn’t mention the cops. 

“Eddie?” Joanna calls from the kitchen.

**_I told you we shouldn’t have gone to that bar. Why did you tell me to trust you?_ **

“I’m coming!” Eddie calls back.

 _Because I needed a drink and I figured it would be good to spend the night somewhere other than Anne’s, but I didn’t think that cops might be tailing us. FUCK._

Venom does its best to soothe Eddie’s nerves so he can join Joanna in the kitchen. She raises an eyebrow at him when he comes out of the bedroom wearing only his boxer briefs, and he tries his best to respond with a suggestive smile to imply that he’s naked on purpose and not because he is unbelievably distracted by his anxiety and forgot to don the rest of his clothes.

It works, actually, because they fuck again a couple hours later with Joanna on top this time. Eddie falls asleep fairly easily afterward, with Joanna spooning him. Venom wraps around a few of his fingers as rings; Eddie keeps his hand under his cheek so he can feel the gentle press of his alien against his skin while he sleeps. 

In the morning, Eddie wakes up on the opposite side of the bed as Joanna, with ring-Venom having lost its shape overnight and now sprouting out of his hand like flower stems until it stirs to wakefulness and hides back inside Eddie. As they grow closer together, Venom goes into a kind of sleep-like state whenever Eddie sleeps, which means waking up with limp tentacles in various positions. Eddie sneaks over to the window and spots a different sedan parked in the same spot as the night before, with two people inside. He looks back toward the bed to make sure Joanna is still asleep before he slips into the bathroom for a shower. 

When Eddie emerges a few minutes later with a towel wrapped around his waist, he finds Joanna wearing pajamas and attaching leashes to the dogs’ collars. She asks him to put on a pot of coffee, and then she is out the door with the dogs pulling her. 

“There are cops parked on the street,” Joanna announces when she gets back. “They’re in an unmarked car, but I saw the lights in the back. Weird.”

Eddie hands her a cup of coffee and clears his throat. “Yeah, um, they might be looking for me, actually.”

“Oh god, why?” 

“Well, I’ve investigated a lot of them and done some not-so-great stories on the SFPD, so I think they’re trying to, uh, pin something on me.” He nervously reaches for his face and traces the outline of his lips with his thumb and index finger. “I’m sorry, Joanna, they probably followed us here. They might, uh, try to ask you questions. I should go.”

She laughs. “At least the sex was good I guess.”

“I really am so sorry, I—”

“No, no, don’t worry about it. It was reckless of me to have a one-night stand with you, of course there are gonna be consequences. That’s just life.”

 _“You_ were reckless? Alright, well, I should’ve been more careful, and I’m sorry, and if they bother you, you can call me, but it’s OK if you don’t call me, too. If they try to intimidate you, just—you know, just try not to be intimidated. I’m sorry.”

She laughs again then leans over to give him a kiss. “Stay safe, Eddie.”

“Yeah, I’ll try.”

On his way outside, Eddie ignores the cops in favor of checking his phone. He has three missed calls from Anne. He heads back to his own apartment to get his stuff and then takes the cable car to Anne’s, feeling the whole time like eyes are on him but electing not to look around to try to spot the cops. 

When he gets to Anne’s, he finds her pacing back and forth on her porch while she talks on the phone. Eddie checks the time and wonders why she’s not at work.

“Oh. You’re back. Good,” she says when she comes inside a minute later.

“You alright?”

She sighs, plops down on the couch, pinches the bridge of her nose. She looks pale, with dark bags under her eyes. “I think Dan and I are breaking up.”

Venom takes over half of Eddie’s face as they both loudly ask, **_“What?”_ **

“It’s just been really hard lately.” She shakes her head. “Our schedules never work out, I mean, he works all the time, and we never see each other. I’ve seen you more in the past couple weeks than I’ve seen him.”

Eddie takes a seat in an armchair perpendicular to her, with Venom protruding from his shoulder. “But that’s easy to fix. You and I went through that, remember?”

“Yeah, but.” She winces. “I just don’t know if it’s worth trying to fix. I’m just—I guess I’m mostly happy with Dan, but I’m…” She looks off, lost in thought. “I’m bored.”

“Oh.”

“Ugh, I feel terrible for saying that. I gotta—I need to talk to Dan some more about it, I shouldn’t be talking to my ex about this, I’m sorry. It’s so easy for me to talk to you, I sometimes forget, you know, that we were together for so long.” She buries her face in her hands. “Oh god, that’s terrible, too. Let’s talk about something else. What’d you do last night?”

“Oh, um, nothing much,” Eddie replies awkwardly.

Venom turns its head to glare at Eddie. 

“Cops are hanging out around my apartment building, and I think they’re tailing me, too,” Eddie mumbles. “But I haven’t been arrested yet, so that’s good.”

“Eddie, don’t tell me you stayed at your apartment last night.”

“No,” Eddie says, dragging out the word like it’s a question. “I, um, stayed with a friend.” 

Anne looks at Venom. “Vee, what did he actually do?”

**_He met a woman at a bar and spent the night at her apartment. She said she was an orthodontist, but I don’t know what that means._ **

Anne rolls her eyes and sighs as she stands up. “I’m just not even gonna ask anymore.” She walks into her room, waving over her shoulder as she goes. 

Once they’re alone, Venom rests its chin on Eddie’s shoulder and says, **_We are excited at the idea of Anne and Dan breaking up. I don’t know which one of us had the feeling first, but we now share it._ **

_Ah, fuck. That’s not very nice of us._

As Eddie walks back to the guest room, he hears Anne come out of her room, and she tells him she’s heading out to a meeting on the other side of town. Immediately after she leaves, she texts him about a pair of cops parked on the hill. Eddie feels restless, pent up with nervous energy, and part of him wishes the cops would just arrest him already so they can get this over with. 

**_Let me help you,_ **Venom soothes as it puts pressure around Eddie’s crotch, sending a shiver up his spine. 

_I’m a little tired from last night. I mean, I could probably still have sex, but I’m not really horny. Just not up for putting in the effort right now, you know._

Venom releases the pressure. **_Yes, I can feel that now. I’d like to be close to you though._ **

Eddie laughs. _Well, come on then, we can take a nap._

Before they even get to the guest room, Venom pulls four large tentacles out from Eddie’s hips and starts taking his clothes off until Eddie stumbles toward the bed in just his boxer briefs. The tentacles bear down on him, wrapping him in a bundle and suctioning to his skin, and just as he is about to tell Venom to ease off a little, a fifth tentacle coils into a spongy pillow beneath his head and Eddie falls asleep in one second. 

He wakes up to the sound of someone coming into the apartment and moving about in the kitchen. Venom is slower to stir awake, its tentacles more lax and sprawled out than before and its head resting against Eddie’s back, alien drool pooling between his shoulder blades. 

“Hey, Vee,” Eddie whispers. “Wake up, buddy, c’mon.”

“Eddie? You here?” Dan’s voice calls.

“Oh, good,” Eddie says to himself. “Hey, Dan!” he shouts.

 **_That wasn’t a long enough nap,_ **Venom complains, tightening its tentacles around Eddie and keeping him pinned to the bed. 

“Jesus, why do you sleep so much now? I thought our symbiosis was supposed to make us stronger.”

 **_We_ ** **are** **_getting stronger._ ** Venom nuzzles its face against the back of Eddie’s neck. **_Just a few more minutes._ **

Eddie squirms. “You sleeping when I’m asleep means we’re more vulnerable, I don’t understand this.”

“Eddie?” Dan appears in the doorway then immediately turns away. “Oh god, sorry. The door was open, so I thought…”

“Sorry! Fuck, I keep the door open for the stupid cat.” Eddie scrambles to sit up and pulls at a tentacle. Venom forms into a human shape and keeps Eddie on the bed, positioning him so he has to lean back against its chest. Eddie grabs at an arm and pulls it across his middle in an attempt at being modest, but Venom just takes it as affection and squeezes him.

“You can come in, Dan, we were just taking a nap,” Eddie says. He pulls down on the fabric of his boxer briefs to cover more of his thighs. 

Dan comes in again and gives a tightlipped smile and a nod to Venom, then to Eddie. “Um, did Anne talk to you?”

“Yeah, uh.” Eddie clears his throat, tries to look sympathetic. “You guys just need to work some things out, right?”

“I don’t know, Eddie.” Dan walks all the way into the room and sits on the edge of the bed, near Eddie’s feet. “You’re, um—you’re bisexual, right?”

Venom drops its chin to Eddie’s shoulder, bored.

“Uh, yeah. Although there might be a different word for being into aliens, I don’t know.”

**_You’re not into aliens, you’re into me._ **

“Yeah, we can discuss that later, Vee.” 

“What’s it like?” Dan asks, looking between the two of them.

“What, being bisexual? Or being with an alien?” _God, I don’t want to talk about either of those things._

Venom very conspicuously melts its head into Eddie while the rest of its human shape turns back into tentacles that fall across his body lackadaisically. 

Dan does not react to the change. “Being with an alien. You can’t exactly do normal relationship things, I mean, you can’t go on a date, get married, have kids, all that kind of stuff. So you could still date people, right? And just have something different with Venom?” 

“Well, yeah, I guess. You know, ideally I’d be able to be with someone who, um, understood the whole Venom thing and wasn’t freaked out by it.” Lamely, Eddie adds, “I never planned on having kids anyway, so it’s not like I’d have to worry about that.”

“Oh, right, yeah.” Dan shakes his head. “I always forget how long you and Anne were together, I should’ve known you didn’t want kids.”

“Yeah, she and I were always on the same page about that,” Eddie mutters.

“I don’t really know how to say this, Eddie.”

Eddie waits. Venom swirls deep in his gut, finally intrigued by the conversation. 

“I don’t think Anne and I can stay together,” he says. “I work too much, and I don’t know how to _not_ work too much, and she’s really worried about you, and so I tried to talk to her about you, and it just—Anne’s not very good at hiding her feelings from me.”

Feeling impatient, Eddie asks, “What—what does that mean?”

“You’re, um, exciting.” He laughs. “And I mean even before the Venom stuff. When Anne and I first started going out, I couldn’t believe it when she told me you were her ex. And the way she talked about you, even when she was mad about everything, I knew there was no way—I just didn’t think I could compete, man. You had an amazing job, and you were kind of famous, you drive a motorcycle, you’re bisexual…”

**_I don’t get what his point is. Why is he just listing things about you? Is he impressed? I would argue only one of those things is impressive, maybe._ **

“And now you’re sitting here with all your cool tattoos and an alien draped over you, and you’re totally chill about it.”

“Oh, I’m not really very chill, though, actually.”

**_And your tattoos aren’t “cool.”_ **

“Dan, just because you have some kind of impression of me that I’m cool, somehow, doesn’t mean that Anne likes—liked me better than she likes you. That’s just kind of, I don’t know, reductive. I could do the same thing and say that you’re a doctor with a stable income and you’re more mature than me and much taller. And you don’t have an alien living inside you.”

“No, I know, I just mean—I think Anne’s bored with me. Ever since you got here, I’ve just been thinking…”

Dan takes a deep breath, then continues, “If Anne and I break up, she’s still going to have you. She’ll have you, and eventually she’ll realize she should be with you, and that’ll be that.” He pauses again, steadying himself. “I was in an open relationship once, when I was a lot younger, and my girlfriend was bisexual and kept telling me I should try to, I don’t know, hook up with a guy or something. She said I just seemed too fascinated and jealous of other men.” He winces. “But I’m straight, I know I’m straight.”

“Dan. What are you trying to tell me?” Eddie asks carefully. 

Dan looks hopeless as he turns his gaze on Eddie. “I wish I could be cool and let you and Anne have a thing together, or, like, we all have a thing together, but I’m just—I’m not cool, Eddie. And I just know Anne can’t be with me without thinking about you, and I can’t help but think that she thinks she would be better off with you, and I just don’t know if Anne and I can ever be happy if I’m always wishing that things could be different.”

“Um. Alright. What—has Anne said anything to you about me? What makes you think she wants to, you know, be with me?”

“Like I said, she’s not very good at hiding her feelings from me. She talks about you a lot. And about Venom. She tries to be diplomatic about it, but I can feel her, uh, distancing herself from me. We’ve been trying to work through some things, but I don’t know. We stayed up most of the night last night talking, and I feel like half the time we were talking about you.”

“Do you—would you like me to talk to her? Or I can leave, spend some time away from you guys. I’m probably gonna get arrested anyway, so that might solve the problem.”

Dan sits up straighter. “You really think you’ll be arrested?”

“Oh yeah, definitely. So what do you want to do?”

Several long seconds pass before Dan responds, “Do you mind if I try something? With you? It might be weird.” 

Venom stirs and slides a tentacle across the back of Eddie’s shoulders like a snake. 

“Uh, what is it?” Eddie asks nervously.

Dan puffs his chest out, then exhales dramatically and leans across the space between them and presses his lips to Eddie’s. 

**_What the fuck._ **

_It’s alright._

Eddie eases into the kiss, cupping Dan’s cheek in his hand and tentatively pushing his tongue into his mouth. Dan makes a surprised noise and tries to do the same, but as soon as Eddie eagerly begins moving his lips, Dan pulls abruptly away.

“Ah, sorry. Shit.” Dan shakes his head. “I just can’t do it.”

“Hey, man, it’s OK. Not everybody’s gay.” Eddie shifts his hips and sends a mental image to Venom to get it to stop the increased blood flow to his cock. 

“I’m sorry. If I can’t even kiss _you_ without feeling weird about it, then I’m definitely not gay.”

**_What does that mean?_ **

“What does that mean?” Eddie repeats.

“Just that if there was ever a man I could maybe be into, it should be you. I wish things were different.”

Eddie leans forward and places his hand over top of Dan’s. Venom adds a tentacle to the mix, pressing against Dan’s skin in a soothing gesture. 

“Talk to Anne,” Eddie says gently. “And just for the record, I don’t think you’re boring. Especially not after this conversation.”

Dan smiles at Eddie then squeezes his hand as he stands. “I have to get back to work. I’m glad we talked. I’m gonna tell Anne that I kissed you.”

Once they are alone again, Eddie says, “Alright, that was fucking weird. I gotta get out of here.”

In an effort to lose the cops, Eddie takes his motorcycle and weaves recklessly through traffic, up and down random streets until they reach a tattoo shop that does walk-ins. He and Venom check around outside the shop and basically do a sweep of the whole block and determine that they probably weren’t followed, then Eddie goes into the shop and is greeted by a heavyset white guy wearing glasses and reading a paperback. He dog-ears the page and blinks up at Eddie with a look on his face that lets Eddie know exactly what he’s going to say:

“You’re on TV, aren’t you?” 

“Uh, yeah, I used to be. You guys do walk-ins?”

The guy nods. “I’m the one taking them today. What’d you have in mind?”

Eddie looks around; he can hear tattoo machines running, but the shop is separated into closed-off rooms, and nobody else is in the waiting area. Eddie removes his hoodie and points at his right forearm.

“My arm is gonna do something weird, and I want you to take a picture of it,” he explains. “Don’t freak out, alright?”

The guy pulls out his phone. He looks skeptical, but he doesn’t ask any questions.

Eddie sends a series of thoughts to Venom. In a matter of seconds, black veins skate along the surface of his forearm into a weblike pattern that weaves around his arm up to his elbow and down to his wrist. The guy makes a sharp intake of breath but still says nothing as he snaps a few pictures. Venom sinks itself back below the surface of Eddie’s skin in one fluid motion.

**_Is this tattoo for me?_ **

_Yeah._

**_Aww, how sweet,_ ** Venom mocks. It squeezes a hug inside Eddie, caving his rib cage in almost painfully. **_No but seriously, it is sweet._ **

It isn’t until the guy is halfway done with the tattoo that he asks, “So, like, what is this? How did you make your arm do that?”

“It’s, um, a skin disease.”

“No it’s not.”

“Alright. It’s a superpower.”

The guy looks up at Eddie over the top of his glasses. “Like the Avengers?”

“No, definitely not,” Eddie says disdainfully. One of the reasons why he got run out of New York was the reporting he tried to do on SHIELD and the Avengers Initiative back in the early 2010s. “Although yeah, like, similar concept.”

**_Why are you telling this man all this information?_ **

_I don’t fucking know._

**_He believes you. You’re not very good at keeping things to yourself._ **

“You know, that’s probably only the third weirdest thing I’ve heard this week, so it’s whatever,” the guy says casually. 

The tattoo is a little jarring, in part because it looks so much like Venom, but also because it covers Eddie’s entire forearm, which means he has filled all the real estate on both arms—a fact he does not fully register until he sees his reflection. He thinks Marie would have done better, more detailed work, but he’s pleased all the same. On his way out, he forgets to ask the guy to remind him what his name is. Another person basically knows about Venom, and Eddie didn’t even get his name.

As he straddles his bike, Eddie checks his phone. He has two texts from Anne and a missed call and voicemail from an unknown number. The texts from Anne say not to come back to the apartment because cops stopped her while she was walking in and tried to ask about the man who left on the motorcycle. The voicemail is from Joanna. 

_“Hey, Eddie, it’s Joanna. I just got home from work, you should give me a call. Bye.”_

Eddie immediately calls her.

“Hey, you wanna come over tonight?” she says as soon as she picks up. “I think it’d be better to talk in person.”

“Oh god, did something happen? Are you alright?”

“Yeah, no, I’m good! I’m fine.” She laughs. “This is all so thrilling for me, I’m sorry. Come over!”

“Alright. I’ll see you soon then, I guess.”

**_Why do we feel confused?_ **

_Because one-night stands don’t usually want you to come over the next day, especially after you’ve told them that you’re wanted by the cops._

Eddie texts Anne, “ _I have a place to stay tonight. I’ll call you in the morning.”_

When he gets to Joanna’s, he immediately notices that the unmarked police car is gone. Once inside her apartment, she explains to him that she came home for lunch and was stopped by the cops while walking her dogs. She played dumb, and they left. 

She then tells him that she did some googling about him, and found some interesting things, stuff that doesn’t make sense, and wonders how much of it is true. Her eyes flicker down to the new tattoo on his arm, but she doesn’t ask about it. It already looks healed, like it’s been there for a while.

**_Are you going to tell her about me?_ **

“Joanna, I can’t—I know all of this is really exciting to you, but I don’t want to put you in danger,” Eddie says. “If I tell you...stuff, then what are you gonna do when the cops come back and ask questions again?”

She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, you’re clearly so worried about the cops that you went and got a tattoo today.”

“Yeah, um, I make bad decisions.”

“So keep making bad decisions!” She rushes toward him and presses her hands to his chest, looking down at him hopefully. “Nothing exciting ever happens to me.”

He places his hands on her hips and gives her a tender kiss in an attempt to placate her. “I think you’re feeling some adrenaline right now, so how about we wait a little bit before I answer your questions?”

She bites her lip, considering. Then she wraps her arms around his neck and says, “OK. Fine. Do you wanna have sex?”

Venom stirs through Eddie’s body in interest. Eddie nods as he takes Joanna by the hand and walks back toward her room. 

While they make out, Venom asks, **_Are you thinking about Anne?_ **

_What? Why would I be thinking about Anne?_

**_You love Anne and want to be with her, but instead you’re with Joanna._ **

Joanna pulls Eddie’s shirt over his head then continues kissing him. 

_This is just sex with a nice person. There doesn’t have to be some deeper meaning to it, babe._

**_Hm. I wonder if she’s working things out with Dan._ **

_Baby, I love you, but can you shut up?_

Venom squeezes Eddie’s organs. **_That’s the first time you’ve said I love you._ **

_Ah shit, really? Sorry. I do love you._

**_I love you, too._ **

Joanna pushes him down onto the bed and straddles him.

It’s a good night.

Eddie wakes up the next morning in his usual state, face down on the bed with a few flaccid tentacles near his hip and around his shoulders, but he immediately jolts upright and sucks the tentacles back inside him. It’s actually the first time he has properly taken control of Venom’s body, but he doesn’t have the bandwidth to process that because he is busy panicking about the fact that Joanna is not in bed next to him. 

“Shit, shit, fuck,” he chants as he stumbles around the room, pulling on his clothes. 

Almost as soon as he opens the bedroom door, Joanna comes into the apartment, in her pajamas, and lets the dogs off their leashes. She raises her eyebrows at Eddie and gives him a wary smile.

“So I guess all the stuff I found online yesterday doesn’t seem so crazy anymore,” she says.

“How much did you—it’s not—I mean, I don’t—”

“It’s OK, Eddie, you’re fine.” She laughs and pulls two mugs down from a cupboard. “You don’t have to tell me anything. I had a _little_ bit of an out-of-body experience when I saw you this morning, but I got over it while I was walking the dogs. My daughter will probably think it’s cool that I hooked up with a monster. Well, I won’t tell her we hooked up, I’ll just say we’re friends or something.”

“Well, you didn’t, uh…I’m just a person—”

**_Not really anymore._ **

“—You, um, you had sex with the human part, is what I mean.”

She squints at him. “You mean I could’ve had sex with the monster part? What’s _that_ like?”

Venom attempts to take over Eddie’s body, but Eddie holds it back and says, “No, no, she doesn’t want a demonstration, sweetheart.”

Joanna laughs, clearly delighted. “I feel like maybe I was just having some kind of hallucination this morning and now you’re messing with me, but either way, this is very fun. Coffee?”

Eddie stays until Joanna has to leave for work. He apologizes to her for dragging her into his mess, but she waves him off, kisses him, and tells him to call her anytime. 

Venom is uncharacteristically quiet as Eddie walks to his bike. Before he takes off, he pulls out his phone and looks up the nearest hair salon, then he calls and makes an appointment for later in the morning. It isn’t until he’s on the main road that Venom speaks. 

**_Joanna was not scared of us. You were so worried about people not understanding us, but she seemed fine._ **

_Yeah, she’s cool._

**_She might be a good fit for us._ **

Eddie huffs a laugh. _You just fall in love with everybody you meet._

**_That’s not true, I’m only in love with you._ **

_I mean that you think we can just be with anybody. Joanna was clearly not looking for anything serious._

**_Hmm._ **

_Can you not feel that Anne is different to me? It seems like you can’t differentiate her from everybody else we interact with._

**_I know. I don’t have a firm grasp on human emotion and relationships yet._ **

_It’s alright, you’ll get it. But yeah, it’s cool to know that other people besides Anne might be fine with the whole monster thing._

**_I think I like “monster.”_ **

_Me too._

There’s a lull in the conversation. Eddie remembers that he was supposed to call Anne; he needs to do that as soon as they get to the salon. He also needs to check on Joanna whenever she gets off work, because he feels guilty that even when he was _trying_ to be careful and protect someone, he still ended up acting reckless and endangering her. And himself. Add her to the list.

**_I’m proud of you for being able to take control of my body. You are much stronger and less of a coward than when we first met._ **

_Thank you?_

**_You’re welcome._ **

The hair salon is nicer than the place Eddie usually goes, which he can tell by the prices of the hair products on display at the front of the shop and because he is the sole man there. He only has to wait about five minutes before his hair stylist leads him back to her chair and immediately begins mussing his hair and asking what he wants, all while making faces in the mirror like she disapproves of how long and unkempt he’s let it get. 

She trims the sides closer than Eddie is used to, and while she is working on the pile of very long hair on top of his head, he spots two cops in the mirror, talking to the woman at the front desk. 

“Oh, fuck,” Eddie says.

“What? What’s wrong?” his stylist asks as she stops cutting his hair.

He’s tempted to ask her to shave his entire head as quickly as she can, but there isn’t even enough time for that before the cops approach him. In a moment of panic, he remembers that he forgot to call Anne.

Officer Miller gives him a shit-eating grin through the mirror. “Eddie Brock, you’re under arrest.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie's been arrested. The police aren't exactly playing fair as they hold him in lockup.

Eddie runs a hand up through his hair, beyond annoyed at himself for waiting so long to get a haircut. He pulls a tuft of it down over his forehead and sighs when it falls all the way past his eyes. 

“We’ve contacted Anne Weying for you,” a short, muscular woman says as she walks into the interrogation room with a folder in her hands, looking deadly serious. She opens the folder and sets a picture in front of Eddie. “I’d like to get right to the point if you don’t mind.”

The picture was clearly taken surreptitiously. The point of view is from outside one of the windows of Anne’s apartment, and just barely visible on the right side of the photo is Eddie, with half his face human and the other half of his face Venom. 

**_Oh, that’s when she told us she and Dan were breaking up. We’re lucky they didn’t get a better picture than that._**

“That was taken yesterday,” the woman says. “So, explain.”

“No.”

She sits back in the chair and crosses her arms over her chest. Her biceps stretch the fabric of her button-down. “Mr. Brock, we live in a world with at least a dozen known enhanced people, with technology and magic and science that allows them to have super strength and abilities to fly and heal and grow or shrink, open portals to other worlds, swing between buildings—I don’t need to continue, do I? You see where I’m going with this?”

“Yeah, one of your guys already told me that you guys think I have some kind of superpower.” Eddie shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

Her eyes twitch, like she’s annoyed that Eddie knew this. “We’d like you to show us what it is.”

“I’m sorry, what crime am I being accused of? If I'm an 'enhanced person,’ I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

She pulls out more papers and pictures from the folder and sets them in front of Eddie. There are three mugshots that Eddie recognizes as men who used to terrorize Mrs. Chen—men Venom ate. 

**_Marie did warn us that Chen might talk._ **

“You don’t have very many friends, Mr. Brock.” She taps the pictures. “Makes it pretty easy to connect the dots between missing persons and your friends. It’s a shame Mrs. Chen felt like she had to rely on a vigilante instead of coming to us.”

Eddie laughs derisively. “Chen called you every other day when she first opened her store, and you guys did fucking nothing and told her to install a goddamn security camera.”

**_Eddie. Stay calm._ **

The woman smiles. “So you know about some of Mrs. Chen’s problems? And you care about her enough to want to solve those problems?”

Eddie scrubs a hand down his face and mutters, “Jesus, you guys are all so bad at your jobs.”

She stands. “I’d like to show you something.”

She leaves the room before Eddie has a chance to respond. Venom is a gentle thrum at the surface of his skin, soothing him and reminding him that it’s there if he needs it. He rubs his forearm in a slow rhythm, offering the same sentiments back to Venom. 

The woman comes back, followed by a skinny guy in a police uniform. As Eddie looks at the guy, it occurs to him in pieces, one by one, that something is off. His deathly pale skin first, then his disproportionately large eyes with black specks for pupils, his stretched mouth, sunken cheeks, chunks of brown hair interspersed with stringy baldness; he looks to be near death save for the confident way in which he carries himself. He sits across from Eddie and stares blankly at him.

Venom turns to pinpricks in Eddie’s arms. 

“This is Officer Jacobsen,” the woman says. “He was assigned to the Life Foundation case after Mr. Drake’s rocket exploded. See, we had a lot of people come to us during that time, scientists mostly, who had some really interesting stories to tell about what Drake was allegedly doing over there, so we decided to gather some evidence. Well, Mr. Brock, the things we found were...exquisite.”

**_This is not good._ **

Jacobsen slowly opens his mouth, prying it apart, tendrils of pink skin from his lips sticking together and snapping off until he reveals several very pointy teeth embedded in the roof and bottom of his mouth, no gums. He keeps opening, unhinging his jaw and tilting his head back until his mouth is nearly as wide as Venom’s becomes when it bites heads off. He then suddenly snaps his jaws shut with a click, returning his face to neutral as if nothing happened. 

Trying to remain calm, Eddie thinks about Marie as he says, “Gross.”

“We don’t show this to everybody, Mr. Brock,” the woman continues. Her tone is clipped, like she’s perturbed that Eddie isn’t more freaked out or impressed by the monster cop. “I’m showing it to you to let you know that _if_ you are hiding what we think you’re hiding, we will be able to take you down. However strong and invincible you think you are, we are stronger. I promise you that.”

Jacobsen moves his hands up onto the table and laces his bony fingers together. His skin pulls and stretches like it’s getting stuck to itself. 

**_Don’t let it touch us._ **

Eddie crosses his arms over his chest and shrugs. “I don’t know what the fuck you mean by that.”

The woman clenches her jaw then gestures to the one-way mirror. She and Jacobsen leave as two other cops come in to lead Eddie to a cell. They push him forcefully inside, and he fakes stumbling and nearly falling, which makes Venom rumble with a gentle laugh.

**_I know none of this is funny, but you are cute._ **

There are three other guys in the cell with Eddie. One of them is asleep, the other two give him a wary look before ignoring him. Eddie slumps against a wall, bends his knees up near his chest and folds his arms over top of them. He drops his head to his forearms and takes deep breaths.

_Tell me what was up with that cop._

**_Are you OK, Eddie?_ **

_Yeah, I’ll be alright. You?_

Venom sends a relaxing sensation through Eddie’s body, causing a shiver to run up his spine. **_I’m OK. We’re going to be OK._ **

_So, the cop._

**_It looked like an incomplete symbiosis. It’s possible the Life Foundation scientists were working on separating symbiote matter_** — ** _like taking cells from a human_**. **_If they figured out how to combine symbiote matter with a human, then they could create countless hybrids like Jacobsen._ **

Eddie swallows a lump in his throat. _So, what does that mean? Does that mean a hybrid would be as strong as you and me, with the same kind of abilities?_

**_I’m not sure. But if we came in physical contact with a hybrid, my guess is that it would try to consume us on a cellular level._ **

_Great._

“Hey.”

Eddie looks up. The guy who had been asleep is now sitting up straight, staring at him. He’s young and too skinny, his dark hair in twists that go every which way.

“You’re that dude with the monster,” he says quietly.

“I’m what?” Eddie replies stupidly.

“Yeah, you’re the dude from that conspiracy theory online. Shit, the cops got to you?”

“Conspiracy theory?”

The other guys are listening, too. They look as confused as Eddie.

“Oh god, you don’t even know,” the guy continues. “The internet thinks you’re single-handedly dismantling the SFPD, man.” He looks at Eddie’s arms. “There’s all kinds of videos, I can’t even tell you how many hours I’ve wasted digging into it. You keep it inside you, right? And then it comes out through your hands? The tentacles and shit? Is that tattoo part of it?”

_How the fuck did I end up in a cell with this fucking guy._

“Look, uh…?”

“Dre.”

“Dre, listen, man, if it was the video of me on the bike, I was infected at the time and I don’t—I don’t remember much about it. I don’t know what else they’re saying, but you can’t believe the shit you see online, right?” He laughs nervously, then widens his eyes at Dre to try to get him to shut up.

“Oh shit, you can’t talk about it, can you? Because that’s what you’re in here for. I got you, I got it.” He puts a finger to his lips, shutting himself up. 

Eddie gives the other guys a stern look, deliberately making eye contact so they don’t try to continue the conversation. They don’t. 

**_That was good,_ **Venom says as Eddie once again rests his forehead against his folded arms, hiding himself.

_Yeah, if only I could’ve acted like that the past couple months instead of acting, you know, like a shithead._

**_How could you have known that there would be consequences for your recklessness?_** Venom teases.

Eddie huffs a laugh. _The cops will be back to get me again soon. They’ll want a confession, and they don’t have very long to get it. Although, I don’t know, something tells me they don’t exactly care about my rights. They might just keep us here forever._

**_Well that’s stupid, we can get out at any time. We could leave right now if you wanted._ **

_And go where? We’d have to leave the city. I’d have to change my identity, and then what? Hide for the rest of our lives? We might as well try to sort this out while we can._

**_I can just eat all the cops?_ **

Eddie actually considers it for a moment. _Wait, you’re fucking with me, aren’t you? It would kill us to eat that much. And remember what Mrs. Chen said? Eating cops is what got us into this mess, I don’t think we’d be fixing any problems by eating more of them._

**_Yeah, it would probably kill us. It’s a fun idea though._ **

_Hey, don't freak out at this question, but what would happen if we separated? Is it even possible now?_

Venom squeezes Eddie's rib cage until his bones move toward his lungs.

_Temporarily! Obviously. I said don't freak out, for fuck's sake. It's just a question._

**_Yes, it's possible. Whatever idea you're coming up with does not sound as fun as eating all the cops._ **

_Let me just think about it. We gotta have options._

Venom doesn't say anything else. It moves its mass up to Eddie’s shoulders and down through his chest and abdomen, massaging him from the inside out. It feels so good that Eddie falls asleep within minutes.

He startles awake with the horrifying thought that Venom fell asleep, too, and is now sprouting out of him for the whole precinct to see, but Venom is still rubbing his shoulders.

**_I won’t fall asleep, Eddie. I have to protect you._ **

_Thanks, baby. How long was I out?_

**_Only a few minutes._ ** Venom constricts inside Eddie. **_They’re coming to get us._ **

Two detectives interview Eddie again in the interrogation room. He answers some of their questions as honestly as he can, in case he really does have to go to trial and needs his story to stay consistent, but after what feels like several hours of questioning they bring in Jacobsen again, and Eddie knows then that he is not seeing a courtroom anytime soon. 

“We know what powers you have, Brock,” one of the detectives says sternly as a bead of sweat falls down the side of his face. “We know you’re hiding it, and we know you killed the three missing cops. You have one chance right now to voluntarily show us what you can do. Otherwise, Officer Jacobsen will force you.”

“You know, it’s not really voluntary if you’re threatening me,” Eddie replies.

The sweaty detective turns to Jacobsen and nods.

Before Jacobsen can fully unhinge his jaw, the door opens and Anne storms in.

“Hi, Eddie, I’m representing you,” she says without looking at anybody else in the room as she comes around the table to sit down next to him. “Detectives, please remove your scare tactic from the room.” She glares at Jacobsen. “Nice to see you again, Officer. I’m sure the city will love paying even more money on your behalf.”

The detectives lead Jacobsen out of the room without a fight. Once they're alone, Anne smiles sadly at Eddie. 

“I tried to get here sooner, they purposely held me up,” she whispers. “How are you?”

Eddie opens his mouth to tell her everything, then he remembers where he is and stops himself. He places his hand over top of Anne’s and pushes tendrils through her skin and into her veins. 

_Did that work? Can you hear me?_ he asks her. 

_What the fuck,_ she replies.

_Whoa, it worked._

**_Good idea, Eddie. This is a very useful tool._ **

_OK, ignoring how weird this is, tell me what’s up,_ Anne says. She holds Eddie’s hand tightly in both of her own and turns her body toward him with an intent look. Her eyes flicker up to his messy hair for one confused moment before she refocuses. 

_You know that cop? You know he’s got symbiote matter in him?_ Eddie says.

_Is that what it is? Oh god, I’ve only heard the stories in court, he’s been sued a few times. I knew something was up with him, but I didn’t know it was that. What are we gonna do?_

**_No, Annie, there is no “we,”_ ** Venom responds. **_It’s too dangerous for you to be involved._ **

Eddie and Anne both start to protest, but Eddie shuts up so Anne can handle it.

_You’re always trying to leave me out of things, but you would’ve been dead without me last time. Let me help._

**_You said you didn’t want to be involved._ **

_Well, now I’m involved. Deal with it._

**_But you’re human, I can’t protect both you and Eddie._ **

_No one is saying you have to protect me, I can take_ care of myself.

 **_I don’t think you understand_** —

 _Guys, please,_ Eddie interrupts. _Do we have a plan?_

The detectives walk back in unannounced, this time without Jacobsen. One of them points at the one-way mirror and says, “Change of plans. We have a couple people on the other side of that glass who had some interesting things to say, Mr. Brock.” He keeps his eyes trained on Eddie, completely ignoring Anne. “Would you like to hear what they have to say?”

Anne scoffs. “So you guys clearly aren’t interested in this ever going to court if you’re about to bring witnesses into—”

“Ah, ah, we didn’t say they were witnesses,” the detective interrupts. He continues only looking at Eddie. “Mr. Brock?”

**_It’s up to you, Eddie, but my opinion is that we need to know who they have. They’re going to use them against us either way._ **

Eddie nods. “Yeah, go ahead.”

“Eddie, this isn’t the way the law—”

“I know, Annie.” He gives her a pleading look. “This was never gonna be a fair fight.”

The first person they bring in is a surprise to Eddie, because he’s pretty sure he does not know her despite her face looking vaguely familiar to him. She’s clearly a teenager, small and baby-faced with her dark curly hair pulled up in a bun on top of her head. She looks bewildered, like it’s a mistake for her to be there, and when she gives Eddie a sympathetic smile he realizes how he knows her. She looks a lot like her mom.

“Ms. Reyes, do you recognize this man?” one of the detectives asks.

“Hon, are you even 18? I don’t know what they said to you, but you don’t have to answer them,” Anne says quickly.

The girl looks at Anne then looks at Eddie. She says, “I don’t know him, but I recognize him. I used to watch his show with my mom sometimes.”

“And can you just repeat exactly what you told us?” the detective continues.

There’s a pause. Then, “I was talking on the phone with my mom and she said she randomly met him and went out with him and that the cops were following him and came to talk to her and then she said she saw some, like, weird alien things coming out of his body when he was sleeping and that he kind of, like, confirmed that he has, like, an alien inside him.”

“And your mother’s name?” 

“Joanna Reyes,” the girl says quietly.

The detective turns to Eddie. “Mr. Brock, do you know a Joanna Reyes?”

He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose as he says, “Yeah, I do.”

As they escort Joanna’s daughter out of the room, she shouts, “I’m sorry, Eddie, I told my friend, and her brother’s a cop, it was just bad luck!”

The next person they bring in is Mrs. Chen. All she says is that Eddie helps her keep criminals out of her store. She won’t answer when they ask _how_ he helps, but Eddie doesn’t think they care about that anyway. They just want him to know that they have her.

The detectives don’t ask Eddie any other questions, and although Anne tries to fight, they take Eddie back to lockup. Anne leaves.

The three guys in lockup are all huddled together when Eddie gets back, with Dre whispering emphatically and gesturing wildly until he spots Eddie and immediately stops. 

“Hey, man, we’ve been talking,” he says as soon as the door shuts behind Eddie. “If what they say is true about you, then you’re fucked if you don’t get out of here.”

“What?” Eddie asks as he takes a seat near enough so they can all whisper.

“They’re not gonna let you go,” one of the other guys says.

“Yeah, so we were thinking we could cause some kind of diversion, right, so your alien can get you out of here.”

“No,” Eddie says nervously. “No, no. We don’t need to—I really don’t need any help. Please.”

The last guy speaks in a deep, commanding voice. “You don’t understand. Jacobsen’s not the only one they’ve got.”

Venom stirs deep in Eddie’s bones. **_That is what I was afraid of._ **

“You mean…?”

The guy nods. “I think they’ve got at least five. My bet is they’ll all be here tonight.”

Eddie runs his hand through his hair, making some of it fall into his eyes. “Alright. Shit. Don’t, um, do anything yet. Let me try to figure out what to do.”

“They’re gonna kill you, man!” Dre whispers forcefully. 

Eddie shakes his head. “No, they won’t. Not in the first 24 hours, they have to—they’ve got to at least pretend like they’re following the law, or else they would’ve killed me already. Let me just—I can just hold out until tomorrow. I think we’ll be OK tonight.”

**_We can also sneak out during the night if you want._ **

The guys argue with Eddie, but he somehow persuades them to trust him. He waits until he's settling down on a mattress to sleep before talking to Venom.

 _I get the feeling that you really want to get out of here,_ he says.

 **_That’s true._ ** It spreads like fingertips through Eddie’s neck and up to his ears, tickling him. **_Knowing that I can easily remove you from danger but trusting your decision to stay—it’s difficult._ **

_We’ll be out of here by tomorrow night. C’mere._ Eddie pinches the skin of his forearm and easily pulls out a liquid strand, which laces with his fingers and relaxes when Eddie rubs his thumb lightly against it.

**_You’re very calm about all this._ **

_I think I panicked enough about it already. It’s here, time to deal with it. You won’t sleep, will you?_

**_No, but I don’t need to. I think my main purpose in developing the ability to sleep is just to experience deeper intimacy with you, no other biological reason._ **

Eddie closes his hand into a fist, squeezing Venom’s mass reassuringly. _Jesus, that’s so lame._

**_Yeah._ **

The mattress is predictably shitty, so Venom works inside Eddie throughout the night, soothing aches and pains before they happen so he doesn’t wake up sore in the morning. Just as Eddie expected, it’s a quiet night. Two of the guys from his holding cell are gone in the morning, but Dre is still there snoring loudly. 

**_Eddie. Look._ **

Venom directs Eddie’s head for him, pointing it toward the obscured view of the elevator. It opens to reveal a cop leading Marie into the station. They stop in view of the holding cell, and the cop points directly at Eddie and then points at Marie before taking her out of sight. 

_Oh my god, fuck this,_ Eddie says.

**_Is it time yet?_ **

_No._

Eddie keeps his eyes glued to the elevator. It opens every so often, cops and detectives coming and going, and he counts six different cops that look slightly off, like they could be infected. They all go the same direction that Marie went, but it’s impossible to see where that might lead.

**_I could sneak part of myself through the walls and try to find something._ **

_No, that’s too risky. What if one of those things touches you?_

**_Good point._ **

Somewhere around mid-morning, a cop leads Joanna off the elevator. She doesn’t even see Eddie before they whisk her around the corner.

Dre wakes up around this time, too, and immediately rattles off his plan for causing a distraction, and it's actually a pretty good plan, but Eddie ignores him anyway. Another guy is tossed into the holding cell; Eddie doesn’t even bother greeting him. Dre tries to convince him to be involved in his plan. By lunchtime, two more guys are crowding the space. Eddie has barely moved in several hours.

Anne comes into the station, holding a file and furiously arguing with a detective and not even glancing in Eddie’s direction before she disappears. 

Next is the tattoo artist whose name Eddie never learned, then a couple of his neighbors that he barely talks to, the hair stylist that saw him get arrested.

Then, later in the afternoon, the elevator opens and out walks Solomon. He looks right at Eddie, shakes his head sadly, then follows a cop around the corner.

**_Now, Eddie. We have to go now._ **

Eddie wavers for exactly three seconds before turning to Dre.

“Alright, let’s do it,” he says, imbuing his voice with fake confidence.

“You serious, man?”

Eddie nods.

Dre smiles like a little kid, then raises his voice to an impossibly loud shout. “Yo, get this fucking guy out of here! This dude’s got tentacles and shit coming out his arms! Please, somebody help, where y’all at?”

Eddie hears the cops running toward the cell as he says calmly, “Alright, nobody freak out. I promise I’m not the bad guy here.” He extends his arm. 

Venom dramatically exits his body through the new tattoo on his forearm, forming a grisly monster-like tentacle to grab Dre and lift him gingerly off the floor. Dre laughs and cheers before resuming his role as victim by screaming and squirming.

_Could you be a little more dramatic, you think?_

**_This is the most fun we’ve had in days, let me have it._ **

When the cops come in, Venom sucks back into Eddie quickly enough that the officers won’t be able to describe what they witnessed. Dre pretends to be hurt, but only one cop goes over to him while the other seven swarm around Eddie, cuff him and lead him out of the cell. One guy tries to sneak a taser into Eddie’s rib cage, but Eddie sends a tendril out of his side and squeezes it around the man’s wrist, stopping the taser just an inch away from his body. 

“Bad idea, man,” Eddie says quietly.

The officer looks terrified. Eddie releases his wrist and does not get tased. 

Venom moves a miniscule part of itself up around the shell of Eddie’s ear and says, **_I know now’s not the time, but that was very hot._ **

Eddie feels pressure around his groin. _Oh my god, are you seriously turned on right now? NOW?_

**_I said I know now’s not the time! And it’s your fault. The concept of being turned on in a situation like this is inherently human, so you’re the reason why I’m like this._ **

_Oh my god, shut up._

They lead Eddie through several hallways until they reach a small, mostly empty office and shove him inside. Only two cops stay with him. Eddie sits on the floor and reaches his cuffed hands up to his face to push his hair out of his eyes. He looks up at the cops, but they stare straight ahead like he’s not there.

“You know, I can leave here whenever I want,” Eddie says.

One of the cops wavers, looks briefly down at Eddie before blinking twice and looking back up. 

“You guys look pretty normal, so I’m guessing they haven’t informed you of what’s going on here,” Eddie continues. “Do you want to see it? The alien that lives inside me, I mean.”

One of the guys shifts and clears his throat.

“No? You don’t want to? Surely some of your coworkers know a little more information than you and yet they still left you in here with me. They had to know they’ve put you in danger.”

They still don’t say anything.

**_What are you trying to do?_ **

_I don’t know, I just don’t like being in here._

There’s more commotion out in the precinct; it sounds like Dre is still causing trouble. Eddie’s pretty sure he hears him say something along the lines of, “It infected me,” which makes Eddie laugh.

**_Everything is going smoothly so far. How long do you think they’ll keep us in here?_ **

_Oh, I don’t think they’re planning on letting us out of here anytime soon._

Venom moves slowly through Eddie’s chest and down his abdomen, then it spreads through his thighs and applies pressure. **_Let me fuck you._ **

_What? No._

**_This is boring. You like having an audience. See how well you can keep yourself composed._ **

_Who said I like having an audience?_

**You** **_do? With everything you say and do. I also saw it in our subconscious, but I think I would’ve figured it out anyway._ **

_Well, I definitely don’t need these fucking cops seeing me squirm. I’m sorry, sweetheart, I know you’re horny. Is there anything else I can do?_

Venom separates into several threads inside Eddie and weaves all around his muscle tissue and veins before settling closer to the surface of his skin. **_I’m going to rub myself all around inside you until I calm down._ **

Eddie closes his eyes. _Jesus fucking Christ, you’re so weird._

Venom moves the threads in one motion, up and down, like it’s rutting up against Eddie’s skin, and it might as well be sex because after just a minute Eddie is hot all over and sweating and telling Venom to stop his body from popping a boner. 

**_I’m almost done, one second,_ **Venom says in the stilted rhythm of its thrusts. 

Eddie buries his face in the crook of his elbow and breathes deeply. It’s been a long time since he grappled with how strange it is to be inhabited by a sentient alien, but as Venom does its version of climaxing and then relaxing like liquid through Eddie’s veins, he feels the weight of the weirdness.

_You alright, buddy?_

**_It’s very strange experiencing human things._ **

_I was just thinking how strange it is to experience alien things._

**_Great. I guess we’re in our shared consciousness now._ **

“Hey. Lift your head up,” one of the cops demands.

Eddie looks up at him and smiles. “Oh, there are rules here? I’m so sorry.”

“What’s wrong with you? Are you sick?” the cop continues.

Eddie maneuvers his arms awkwardly to wipe the sweat from his brow. “No, I just look like this. Thanks.”

The cops don’t say anything else, and as Eddie is contemplating whether he should try to goad them into a conversation, the door opens and several cops pull Eddie to his feet and drag him across the hall. 

One of the cops is saying something, but Eddie doesn’t register any of it because Venom is yelling in his head: **_One of them is touching us, one of them is touching us, Eddie, one of them is touching_** —

 _Go, go, do whatever you need to_ —

Venom takes over Eddie’s face for just a second, long enough to bite off a hand gripping Eddie’s elbow, while simultaneously extending tendrils out of Eddie’s back and sides and taking out every cop holding them. It’s moving rapidly and subtly in hopes that no one will catch it on video or be able to clearly explain what they saw. There is chaos, people running and screaming, and several officers draw their guns and begin firing, but Eddie sneaks down the hall and manages to make it into the room where apparently all his friends and acquaintances are being held. 

He only gets a split-second look at Anne before three hybrid cops push him out of the room and forcibly pin him to a wall. Somebody shouts something, and suddenly a noise, too loud and too painful, pierces through Eddie, tearing him and Venom apart from within. 

**_Hold on, Eddie. Just hold on. I love you._ **

“I love you, too,” Eddie says through gritted teeth as he feels Venom retreat and the sticky, pale vines from the hybrids press against the skin of his arms and neck and worm their way inside of him. 

He passes out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So much plot, so much made-up bullshit, I promise at some point I will get back to the monster porn <3


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie and Venom are separated. An old friend helps Eddie.

Eddie wakes to the sound of beeping, and fluorescent lights above him, his head empty and swimming and an IV coming out of his arm. He has on a hospital gown, and he is lying in a hospital bed, but he doesn’t think he’s in a hospital. 

There are two cops standing on the far side of the room like guards. A woman in a white lab coat sits on a rolling stool just a few feet from his bed, facing away from him, looking at a computer screen. 

Eddie sits up on his elbows and clears his throat. 

The woman turns toward him.

Eddie blinks a few times in disbelief. “Dr. Skirth?”

She pushes her glasses up on her nose and smiles softly at him. “Hi, Eddie.”

“I thought, um. I heard you were dead.” He tries to sit up more but doesn’t have the strength. He thinks he might be dreaming.

Skirth looks at the cops for a second before turning back to Eddie. “Yeah, I was.” She laughs nervously. “I was patient zero for the injections. My friends at the Life Foundation extracted some cells from the symbiote that died with me, created a cocktail, got lucky, and now here I am. Good as new.”

Eddie presses his fingers to his eyes to try to focus. He can feel his and Venom’s shared cells deep inside him, but no other part of Venom remains. He hurts all over: his body and his mind yearning, reaching. “Um, how come you’re not all fucked up like the other guys that have it?”

“Well, I think it’s kind of the same reason why you bonded so well with a symbiote when other people died. Everybody reacts differently, and some things just aren’t a perfect match.” She turns back toward her computer as she continues, “You have more tattoos than the last time I saw you.”

“Yeah, uh, been impulsive lately. Skirth, what am I doing here? Where are we?”

“Oh, um. We’re in a lab. I have a contract with the police department because of my—my condition.” She looks at the cops again, then widens her eyes at Eddie. Whatever it is she wants to say, she can’t say it. “You had some dead matter in you, so I had to remove that. Your body completely rejected it. And I’m supposed to get Ven—the symbiote out of you, to separate you.”

Eddie shakes his head and mouths, “I don’t have it.”

Skirth mouths back, “I know.” She then says out loud, “It will take some time, and you’re supposed to stay here until I finish. Then, um. You’ll go back into police custody, I think.”

Eddie sighs and drops his head back against the pillow. Skirth will pretend to try to find a symbiote in him for the next few hours, then she will have to tell the officers that Eddie is just a regular man. He doesn’t feel great, and he is not entirely sure how long he and Venom can be separated before they both begin dying, so he figures the sooner he can get back to it the better. 

“Hey, Skirth.”

“Hmm?”

“You got anything you can give me for anxiety?”

She gives him a sympathetic look. “The best I can do is knock you out for a few hours, which I was thinking about doing anyway.” She leans in close and whispers, “Who can I call for you?”

“Anne Weying,” Eddie responds without hesitating. “Tell her I’m alright.”

Eddie whispers Anne’s phone number to Skirth and trusts that she can cement it to memory. Then, she knocks him out.

The next time Eddie wakes up, he feels worse. He has no idea how much time has passed, but his body feels weaker and in more pain. He wonders which of his organs will give out first if he doesn’t get back to Venom, and what would kill him the fastest. Venom hasn’t had to eat any significant portion of Eddie’s insides lately, and it did a pretty good job of mending the organs that it _did_ start to eat by fusing itself permanently into missing places—the walls of his heart, the lining of his stomach, the branches of his lungs all held together by his symbiote’s matter. 

“There’s nothing. See, if you look at this here, this part would be lit up if the symbiote were present,” Skirth is saying to the cops as Eddie blinks back to full wakefulness. There are more people in the room now, a couple detectives and a few uniformed officers gathered around her workstation. “And here, I have a sample of his blood, which I can do a simple test of holding it to fire and seeing how it reacts, so you can—”

“Like in _The Thing,”_ one of the cops interrupts.

“I’ve never seen that,” Skirth replies stoically. “So when I put it to fire like this, his blood is demonstrating no abnormalities. I’ve also tested sound frequencies for adverse reactions. If he’s awake, we can—oh, he’s awake.” Skirth moves in front of everyone and stands over Eddie. They all look down at him.

“Go ahead, play the noise,” Eddie says.

It’s an annoying ring, but it doesn’t make Eddie’s organs feel like they are tearing and melting like it did in the precinct. When Skirth turns it off, Eddie says, “So am I cleared? Can I go home?”

Several officers begin speaking at once, but they all shut up as one of them says, “He bit an officer’s hand clean off. He had tentacles coming out of him, grabbing several people and throwing them around the room—are you seriously telling me we all just imagined that?”

“No, sir, it’s possible he did all of that. But there is no evidence that he is still capable of those acts,” Skirth says. “Whatever was possessing him is gone. I’m sure of it.”

“So it moved into someone else then?”

“Or it died,” Skirth replies. “If any officers with symbiote injections touched him, they could have killed his symbiote. I don’t know how likely it is, but it’s possible. Otherwise, yes, it’s probably with someone else.”

One of the officers throws his hands up. “Then how the hell are we supposed to know what happened to it or where it is now?”

Skirth shakes her head. “That’s outside of my scope of practice.”

The officers bristle and grumble, but ultimately they can’t bully Skirth into giving them any better answers, so they put Eddie in cuffs and take him back to the police station. Eddie pesters the cops all the way back to the station, then continues pestering anyone within earshot once he is back in lockup. He shouts his rights at them, the names of journalist friends he will call once he gets out, the abuses he’s suffered since being arrested, the lack of evidence—and when none of that moves them, he starts shouting over and over again that he wants to see his lawyer. The other guys in the holding cell join him in his pleas because they want him to shut up. 

After a couple hours, Eddie begins to feel lightheaded and foggy. By nightfall, hunger and fatigue set in like he hasn’t felt since before symbiosis. He tries to keep shouting at the cops, but his body gives out. He sits on the floor and hugs himself tightly to try to fight the hunger pangs. His chest and back begin hurting, too, like severe heartburn, and when he takes deep breaths he feels a stabbing in his lungs. He tries to remember the symptoms of a heart attack, but thinking about having a heart attack just amplifies his anxiety and worsens the overall pain. He hears the cops gloat about him finally shutting up, and one of them comes into the cell to check on him and mocks him when he sees the state Eddie is in. He walks up to Eddie and nudges him with his foot, as if jokingly checking to make sure he’s alive. 

Eddie turns his head and vomits on the cell floor and then blacks out for a second. 

A couple of heavily muscled cops drag Eddie’s limp body out of the cell and into an empty room.

“Why you guys have so much—many empty rooms here?” Eddie mutters incoherently as he falls to the floor. He scrunches his face up. “And where are my friends?”

The cops don’t answer him. They put handcuffs on him once again and leave him in the room, locking the door on their way out. 

Eddie groans and falls to the side. He curls in on himself and says to no one, “I’m gonna fucking die without you, Vee.”

Eddie can’t fall asleep, but he’s not lucid, either. Time passes, people come in and out and talk to him and touch him, but he has no idea what’s going on. Eventually someone sticks a needle in his arm, and next thing he knows he is sitting in an interrogation room across from the muscular woman detective whose name he never learned, and he feels energetic and maybe a bit manic.

“What the fuck did you guys give me?” he asks, blinking his eyes as he adjusts to the light. 

“Mr. Brock, where’s the symbiote?” the woman says.

“Where’s my lawyer?”

“OK, different question. Why is your health rapidly declining?”

Eddie shrugs. “I don’t know, maybe because you guys tried to infect me with alien DNA? Could that be it?”

“We were extracting the symbiote that inhabits your body, the one we all saw do extraordinary things right here in this precinct. I don’t know what you’ve done with it, but we are keeping you here until we find it. And then you will likely spend the rest of your life in prison for murdering three police officers. And for assault.”

“Awesome.”

She keeps Eddie in the interrogation room until his body feels like it’s breaking down again, then they throw him back in the empty room but forgo the cuffs, which is a small improvement of his situation. He gets some food, too, which he vomits back up minutes after eating it. He gets the shakes but somehow falls asleep with his whole body violently shivering. 

They continue giving him some kind of steroid to make him lucid so they can prop him up in the interrogation room and try to get him to talk, but it gets harder and harder for him to focus on anything other than the pain of being alone in his deteriorating body. After just a day or so, he has a seizure. They take him back to Skirth’s lab.

“He is dying, he needs to be in a hospital. I don’t have what I need here to—”

“Yes, you do. Inject him.”

Eddie is once again on a hospital bed, in a hospital gown, this time hooked up to several different things. In addition to the IV, he has a cannula in his nostrils, a catheter in his dick, a feeding tube in his abdomen right near one of his tattoos, and a device half-attached to his chest that he prods for a second before giving up on figuring out what it is. He decides to be grateful that he doesn’t have a colostomy bag. 

“Skirth,” he says weakly.

She immediately comes to his side. The officer she had been arguing with looms behind her, folding his arms over his chest. 

“Eddie! How do you feel?”

He groans and moves the nasal cannula to a more comfortable position. “Like shit, Skirth.”

“Yeah. Well. You need to be in a hospital. I’ve done what I can here, but this won’t work long-term. Your most immediate problems are your lungs and kidneys, but I’m not qualified to fix either of those things. That port on your chest would be for dialysis, if it comes to that.” She repeats, “You need to be in a hospital.”

“Yeah, sounds like it.” Eddie looks at the cop. “What do you guys want from me? Do you want me to die?”

The officer uncrosses his arms and addresses Skirth. “Why can’t you inject him?”

“Look, guy,” Eddie starts. “I’m sorry your buddies haven’t given you the full picture of what’s going on here, but if those injections worked on me, I’d be super strong and would be able to get the fuck out of here. How do you think your superiors would feel about that?”

The officer continues only looking at Skirth. “Is that true?”

“It’s possible,” she replies quietly. 

The officer steps away to confer with the other officer standing on the opposite end of the room. Skirth sits on her stool and draws up close to Eddie so they can whisper.

“I’ve been talking to Anne,” she says conspiratorially. “If I can get you to Dr. Lewis at the hospital, he can get you to Anne. I’ve been trying to get you moved to the hospital since you got here two days ago.”

Eddie balks at the revelation that he’s been in Skirth’s lab for two entire days. “I don’t understand, Skirth. You have the injections, why can’t you muscle your way out of here? And take me with you, obviously.”

She shakes her head. “They don’t see me as a threat, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

“But you’re helping them! They’re the worst, Skirth!”

“We all have to do things to survive, Eddie. I know you understand that.”

He sets his jaw and glares at her. “Do not let me die.”

One of the cops comes back to tell Skirth that they won’t be taking Eddie to the hospital at this time, and that she has to keep monitoring his symptoms until they “figure something out.” Eddie sighs. 

Skirth adjusts his medication then reaches under the bed to retrieve his drainage bag to empty it. He asks her why he has a feeding tube, and she says he hasn’t kept anything down in several days and that his blood sugar is extremely low and he’s lost 10 pounds and, “haven’t you noticed, Eddie?”

He has not noticed. He can’t register anything physical except for pain and emptiness. He needs his symbiote.

The hours pass uneventfully. He slips in and out of fitful sleep until it’s dark in the lab and Skirth bids him a goodnight. He falls back asleep for what feels like just a few minutes before he’s being shaken awake by a frantic Skirth. It’s pitch black in the lab.

“Come on, Eddie, time to go,” Skirth says as she moves things around, tugging at his lines and momentarily cutting off his supplemental oxygen.

“What—where are we—”

“I swapped their water bottles during their shift change, the new guys on duty right now are knocked out. We don’t have long, can you sit up?”

It hurts and it’s slow, but Eddie manages to get to the edge of the bed. His eyes adjust to the lack of light enough for him to see a wheelchair by the bed, with an oxygen tank strapped to the back and his drainage bag, half full of murky piss, hooked underneath. His feeding tube and IV are capped off, his port still incompletely attached to his chest.

“OK, one, two, three,” Skirth says superfluously as she easily hauls Eddie off the bed and into the wheelchair. She struggles to attach the leg rests and curses repeatedly under her breath until they are in place. Eddie thanks her as he rests his feet on them. 

Skirth hands Eddie a handbag full of medication for him to hold in his lap while she pushes him at a full sprint through the dark hallways of her lab. He almost pukes.

“Fuck. Security guards,” she whispers as they make their way outside. “Keep your head down.”

Eddie looks down at his lap and doesn’t move a muscle until he hears a van door slide open.

“We don’t have time for the lift, hold on,” Skirth says before picking up both Eddie and his wheelchair in one smooth motion and placing him in the back of the van. “Huh, I really am strong,” she says, distracted, as she straps the wheelchair in place.

Voices shout in the distance. Skirth runs around to the driver’s seat and scrambles to pull out of the parking deck as shots fire behind them.

“Are they shooting at us?” Eddie asks.

The back window of the van shatters; Eddie and Skirth both duck. 

“Uh, yeah! Seems like it!” Skirth shouts back at Eddie. She lays on the gas and careens onto a main road, which is fortunately devoid of any cars since it’s the middle of the night. 

It’s quiet for a minute until a couple cop cars catch up to them with their sirens blaring. Skirth waits until they’re close and then slams on the brakes and abruptly turns the wheel, nearly tipping the van on its side to drive in the opposite direction. Eddie’s wheelchair is still fastened to the floor, but it rocks precariously beneath him, and he can feel the oxygen tank swinging against the backrest. 

“Skirth, what the fuck are we doing?” Eddie shouts.

“We’re getting to the goddamn hospital!”

A cop car pulls up on their left side, so Skirth edges to the left and pushes them off the road and into a storefront. She exhales a loud “woo” of adrenaline and speeds back up. Somehow they make it to the hospital without the cops catching up to them, which makes Eddie think that for some reason the cops just gave up in their pursuit. Even without the threat of sirens in the distance, though, Skirth still manhandles Eddie’s wheelchair out of the van and rushes him into the E.R., where her urgency is met with a calm nurse at the front desk and a very quiet and mostly empty waiting room. 

“Is Dr. Lewis here?” Skirth asks by way of introduction. 

The nurse confirms that he is, but Skirth still has to argue with her for a few minutes before convincing her to call him over the P.A. system. In the five minutes that they have to wait for Dan, Eddie starts to crash, so Skirth gives him an assortment of pills from the medication bag that is somehow still sitting in his lap. She fidgets and paces and nervously looks toward the door.

“Where are you gonna go?” Eddie asks her.

“I don’t know. I can’t go back. They have to know it was me driving that van. They have to know I stole you. Why aren’t they here? Why haven’t they found us?”

“Well, it’s the middle of the night and you crashed a couple of their cars.” Eddie takes a deep breath in an attempt to get enough oxygen to continue talking. “They probably know we’re here, but I don’t know, it’ll take them some time to get here. You should leave.”

She keeps looking toward the entrance. “I have a wife, you know. And two kids. They already moved to Los Angeles a few months ago. They’ve just been...waiting for me.”

“Go to them, Skirth. Get the fuck out of here.”

“Dora.” She looks at him. “You can call me Dora.”

He smiles up at her. “Dora. Go. And thank you. I, uh, definitely owe you.”

She squeezes his shoulder. “Just don’t die, OK?”

“I’ll try not to.”

She stays with him until Dan arrives, then she gives him a quick kiss on the cheek and leaves. 

“Eddie! Oh my god, come with me,” Dan says in shock as he quickly wheels Eddie through the halls and into an empty room. “How did you even—”

“Dan, listen to me, you gotta call Annie. I know it’s the middle of the night, but you gotta call her and get her here right now.”

“I know, I know.” Dan leaves Eddie in the wheelchair next to the bed as he pulls his phone out of one of his pockets. “We’ve been trying to figure out what to do, the three of us,” he says, distracted. He puts the phone to his ear. “Vee hasn’t been doing very well without you.”

“But are they al—”

“Anne! Hey,” Dan says, his eyes going wide. “He’s here at the hospital, can you get here? Yeah. Oh, yeah, good idea. OK, see you soon.” He hangs up and looks at Eddie. “They’re gonna run here, you know, hopping buildings. In the meantime, let’s get you into this bed.”

Dan scoops Eddie up with a bit more exertion than Skirth needed, and Eddie wraps his arms around Dan’s neck like he did when Dan had to carry him out of the tank of lobsters a lifetime ago. 

Eddie is too weak to hold a conversation while they wait for Anne, so Dan just quietly hooks up an IV, empties Eddie’s drainage bag, checks his vitals, then says, “Your blood pressure is very low.” He puts a pulse oximeter on Eddie’s middle finger and then fiddles with his oxygen tank, which is still hanging on the back of the wheelchair. “Try to breathe in deep through your nose, Eddie, your O2 is in the 80s. I just bumped you up to four liters. Man, I wish I had a concentrator in here to hook you up to, this tank is running low.”

“Dan. I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Eddie says breathlessly. 

“Sorry. Just rambling. Do you feel OK? I just need you to survive for the next few minutes.”

Eddie closes his eyes and tries to breathe in deep through his nose, the prongs of the cannula pressing against the inside of his nostrils. “They’re close. I can feel...Vee pulling...toward me.”

“Oh, really? That’s neat.” Dan grasps Eddie’s hand and squeezes it. “Hang in there, buddy.”

Eddie’s mind goes hazy as all his senses concentrate on Venom’s return, and he isn’t sure if it’s a couple minutes or several hours before a small hand tentatively reaches for his fingers. Eyes still closed, he twines his fingers with the hand and thinks, _Come back, sweetheart._

Venom stirs in the space between Eddie and Anne’s palms, then inches its way carefully into Eddie’s skin and through his bloodstream, slowly, meticulously, mending each cell of his body until they are fully reunited. Warmth and comfort wash over Eddie like he’s never felt before. 

**_Hi, Eddie._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes you just gotta take a favorite character and fuck them up a lil bit <3


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie and Venom get some rest and find comfort in one another after getting back to each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning that my opinion on monsterfucking is that it should be at least a little bit grotesque babeyy. (Check new tags!!)

_Hey, Vee._

_I’m still here, too,_ Anne says. 

Eddie opens his eyes and lets go of Anne’s hand. She leans down and gives him an awkward hug.

 **_They’ve made you part-machine to keep you alive?_ ** Venom asks while working its tendrils around the port, the IV, the feeding tube and the catheter to forcibly eject them from Eddie’s body, throwing them to the floor in disgust and then tenderly healing the wounds left behind. **_So close to death, so weak, my Eddie, mine, only I can fix you, mine, never leaving,_ **Venom mutters like a stream of consciousness. 

Eddie feels better instantly, like he’s been shocked back to life. He quickly sits up on the side of the bed, stretches his back and rolls his shoulders, reacclimating himself to a nearly indestructible body. He pulls a tendril out of his hand and squeezes it tightly, then presses his lips to it. It wraps around his fingers like rings. 

“We gotta get out of here,” he says.

“You can go back to my apartment until we figure out a plan,” Anne replies. 

“Where’s Dan?” Eddie asks as he looks around the room. “And my clothes...I don’t have any fucking idea where my clothes are.” He spots his shoes near the wheelchair. Venom extends a tentacle to grab them. 

“Oh, um. We brought you some clothes.” Anne pulls boxer briefs, jeans and a button down out of her tote bag and hands them to Eddie. “Dan’s still working, so he couldn’t just stay in here all night with you,” she says as Eddie changes.

“Alright, uh, we need to get out of here,” Eddie repeats. His jeans hang loosely on him, sliding down his hips until Venom catches them and holds them in place. “I don’t want to stay at your apartment for long. I think I need to go—I need to get out of town for a while. Maybe go to L.A. Do you know what happened to everybody they brought in? You know, the people they questioned about me?” Eddie places a hand at the small of Anne’s back and gently guides her out the door. 

“Jesus, Eddie, take a breath at least.” She rummages around in her bag and hands Eddie his watch and an assortment of bracelets. “They whisked you away and then told us we were all free to go. It was some bullshit, too, when we were all in there just waiting around, a couple of your friends said the cops made it sound like they had no choice but to come into the station, like _they_ were under arrest. Joanna and her daughter are nice, I like them a lot.”

They walk out of the hospital without stopping to check out. Eddie pulls Anne to his side and leads her behind a wall outside, then he jumps straight up; Venom takes over both their bodies and stealthily hops over buildings.

 **_Why don’t we do this more often, Eddie?_ **Venom asks, clearly delighted by the freedom to run. 

_I mean, anybody could spot us, but I just don’t care right now,_ Eddie responds. _What about Solomon? They didn’t arrest him, did they?_

 _No,_ Anne replies, her voice tinny and distinct within their combined mass. _But he has a good lawyer. He said there’s no use hiding anymore, so he’s moving back home and going back to work._

_Oh, good. That’s really good. And thanks for keeping Vee safe, Annie._

**_We had a nice time together._ **

_No, we didn’t. Vee cried about missing you the whole time I had ‘em._

**_That was supposed to be our secret, Annie._ **

Venom jumps gracefully to Anne’s front door, sucking its body back into Eddie the second their feet hit the porch. Anne and Eddie look at each other and laugh. Eddie gestures for Anne to go on ahead of him. 

“So, what’s the plan?” Anne asks once they’re inside.

“The plan is for me to rest for a day because I almost just died, and I’m still feeling pretty goddamn anxious,” Eddie replies with a nervous laugh. “I’m not gonna lie, if any cops show up here, I’m gonna eat them.”

Venom vibrates with excitement inside Eddie.

“Eddie, for fuck’s sake.”

“No, really, I have somewhat of a plan, I just.” He scrubs a hand down his face. “I’m really fucking pissed about everything. I’m gonna try to get some rest.”

Eddie turns toward the guest room, but Venom reaches a tentacle out and places it around Anne’s hip. She drops her hand to it and strokes it softly.

**_You need sleep, too, Annie. Nap with us._ **

“Whoa, hey, what—what’s this about?” Eddie asks awkwardly.

Anne walks toward him, Venom reeling her in. “Um, well,” she says. “Vee was kind of dying, too, after a day or so of being away from you, so Dan and I kind of, um, shared it? It used our bodies for any kind of connection to you, and it needed a lot of attention to survive until we got back to you, and we…”

 **_We made love. With Anne and Dan,_ **Venom says in Eddie’s head, so Anne can’t hear.

Eddie blinks several times. “You what?”

Anne grimaces. “It kind of helped Dan and I work through our problems, so that’s good, right?”

Eddie takes control of the tentacle wrapped around Anne’s hip and yanks it back into his own body. He crosses his arms over his chest. “You guys were having threesomes? While I was dying.”

**_I was dying, too, Eddie._ **

“No! Not threesomes,” Anne clarifies. “Wait, did it say that? It doesn’t understand—my body’s not a good enough match for longer than a day or two, so it bonded with Dan and me at the same time, and we all slept in the same bed together and just had to be really close for, like, a day. But we didn’t do anything sexual!”

**_It was very intimate._ **

Eddie sighs. “I don’t think Vee knows the difference between sex and intimacy,” he explains. “At any point did you guys think you might be, I don’t know, going behind my back?”

Venom growls possessively. 

Anne steps up to him and puts her hands on his hips. “We did what we had to do to keep Venom _alive_ , Eddie. To get back to _you.”_ She reaches a hand up to his face and cups his cheek. “Because we love you. I’m learning lately that apparently I would do anything to keep you safe, Eddie.”

Against his better judgment, Eddie leans into her touch. “I’m sorry. I know. I just—the last few days were, um. Impossible.”

“I know, honey. C’mon. Let’s get some rest.” She leads him by the hand into her bedroom.

 **_I’m sorry, Eddie,_ ** Venom says. **_I was miserable without you. Anne and Dan made it bearable._ **

Too exhausted and confused to stay upset, Eddie decides to just do what feels good, to take what Anne and Venom are offering. He and Anne both strip down to their underwear before crawling under the covers, and they easily fall together like they used to do each night, on their sides with Eddie curled against Anne’s back, his arm tight around her stomach and his face buried in her hair. Venom emerges in thick ropes out of Eddie’s back and coils around them both, holding them in a cocoon. 

Eddie falls asleep instantly.

When he wakes up, he feels the weight of blanket-Venom draped over his whole body, and the press of Anne’s fingertips against his stubble. 

“Hi,” Anne whispers, facing Eddie with a smile. It’s dark and quiet with their heads under blanket-Venom. “You still need a haircut. And a shave.”

Eddie grumbles and buries his face in the sheets—except he finds that it’s not sheets, it’s more Venom. “And a shower. God, how many days was it? I couldn’t keep track.” He puts his hand on Anne’s hip and rubs his thumb in circles over her soft skin.

“Almost five. You guys separated on purpose, didn’t you?” She moves her fingertips to his chest and traces over his tattoos.

“Mm-hmm. We figured it was the best way out of there, you know, to make the cops think they were imagining things or that Vee had died, and we trusted that you would be willing to go with it. But, seeing how fast we really did almost die, now I know never to do that again.”

She looks at him sadly, then she scoots her face forward and presses her lips against his, just a soft and easy kiss. 

“What was that for?” Eddie mumbles, his voice breaking.

“Dan told me that he kissed you. It’s only fair.”

“Good lord, I forgot about that.”

She laughs quietly. “You know, um, being with Vee the past few days put a lot of things in perspective.”

“Yeah?”

Anne continues tracing her fingertip down his chest and stomach until she reaches _til I die AW._ “Do you know how much it loves you?”

Venom stirs but doesn’t quite wake up.

“I think I have an idea, yeah,” Eddie whispers.

“Honestly, it was a little scary. To feel it—to feel that kind of intensity. I don’t know how you’re in there alone with it, I mean, feeling what it feels, I thought my brain was going to explode if I didn’t share it with someone else.” She scoots forward, so close that Eddie instinctively moves his hand around her lower back. “I think I get why it wants you to have more human relationships—outlets to keep you from feeling overwhelmed.”

Eddie doesn’t say anything. A small piece of Venom curls around the shell of his ear like it’s snuggling in its sleep. 

“I don’t really know how to put it in words, but once Dan and I decided to help Venom together, we knew there was just no going back to the way things were before. Things are just different now.”

“What do you mean?”

Anne looks down at his mouth then back up to his eyes. Her hand slides up his side before settling around one of his pecs as she kisses him again. 

Eddie makes a surprised noise in the back of his throat and moves his lips tentatively against Anne’s. He digs his fingertips into her back, pulls her forward, slots his thigh between hers. Finally Venom wakes up and spreads out between them, crawling into Anne’s skin and bringing her even closer. After a couple minutes, she rolls on top of him and deepens the kiss, and Eddie abruptly pulls away. 

“Wait. Wait,” he says, catching his breath. He’s holding her face in his hand, black threads from his fingers spidering up her cheek and forehead in a delicate pattern. “We can’t do this, Annie.”

 **_Why not?_ **Venom asks.

“Sweetheart, can you just—”

“Oh, fuck, I’m sorry, Eddie,” Anne says, embarrassed, as she extricates herself and lies next to him. “Like I said, it’s just—it’s overwhelming.”

Venom continues dancing thin tendrils into Anne’s skin, concentrated around her torso. 

“Vee, c’mon. Stop,” Eddie says, tugging at the symbiote until it retreats fully back inside him, save for a head coming out of his shoulder. 

Anne looks up at the ceiling. “I have no idea how to be normal around you two now. I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s alright,” Eddie placates. “I’m just feeling, uh, vulnerable right now, and I think Vee might be a little confused after being with you for so long.”

“Hey, you just do whatever you need to do, OK? I know how Vee feels, but I shouldn’t assume you share those feelings.”

Venom nuzzles its head against Eddie’s cheek and says, **_I think being apart has made our feelings more different than usual._ **

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees. He tangles his fingers in the sinew of Venom’s neck. “We’ll get back on the same page, we were just separated for too long.”

Venom nips at Eddie’s neck, its razor sharp teeth like a soft tickle against his skin. **_My Eddie,_ **it mumbles. 

Anne smiles at them. “How about we put a lid on this conversation, and I give you guys some privacy?” 

Eddie puts his hand on her stomach to stop her from getting up. “Hey. Napping with you was awesome. Thank you.”

She grabs his hand and kisses the inside of his wrist, her mouth grazing over ink and bracelet before she lets him go. “I have some work to get done anyway. We’ll worry about, I don’t know, setting some boundaries later. So I don’t embarrass myself.”

Eddie laughs shyly, then Venom takes control of his body, coaxing him out of bed and toward the guest room, and Eddie relaxes into its hold, completely trusting it to carry his legs where they need to go.

The cat is curled up in the middle of the bed, so Venom uses two small tentacles to gently scoop him up and send him out the door, then it closes the door behind him. It then scoops Eddie up in a similar manner and sets him neatly on his back on the bed. It materializes its head and several tentacles and wraps itself on top of Eddie, kissing him on the lips before resting its face on his chest, its mass undulating against him and inside him. Eddie puts his arms around Venom’s pseudo-back and rubs his face against the top of its head. Venom whines, deep ululations wracking their bodies together painfully.

“Whoa, hey, I’m here,” Eddie soothes, petting its back. “I’m right here. I got you. I’m here.”

**_I almost lost you. We’re never separating again._ **

“Yeah, obviously.” Eddie huffs a laugh. “I thought we’d have a _little_ more time before being on the edge of death.”

 **_I think the stronger we are together, the weaker we become if separated. It was a good plan, but we can never do it again._ ** Venom makes its mass more solid so it can move across Eddie’s skin like hands. **_You’re smaller. You need to eat._ **

“I can’t—the thought of eating makes me feel sick, so can we just…”

Venom ghosts a limb over Eddie’s hipbone. **_We can do anything. Anything you want. I just need to be here, with you._ **

Eddie closes his eyes. He feels like he might cry. “I think we’re on the same page now.”

Venom shifts itself inside Eddie’s body, reaching deep into his organs and the marrow of his bones while looking intently at him. **_Your kidneys and lungs broke down first?_ **

Before Eddie answers, Venom spreads itself through his lungs and kidneys, sending the most intensely soothing tingling, cold feeling through his rib cage and upper back, causing him to gasp out a sigh. A tear slips down his cheek.

_Yeah. Yeah, they hurt the most._

Venom works through every part of Eddie’s body like that, like it’s making him new. He can feel it reinforcing the parts of itself that are permanently affixed to some of his organs, and he hums his thanks and scratches the pile of Venom on his chest. He takes a deep breath, relieved to feel his lungs easily and painlessly expand to get all the oxygen his body needs.

 **_Better?_ **Venom asks after a few minutes, with a shit-eating grin down at Eddie.

“A million times better.” Eddie kisses the grin off its face. “What can I do to make _you_ feel better?”

It buries its face in Eddie’s neck and nips at his skin. **_Just be you._ **

With a laugh, Eddie replies, “You’re such a sap. C’mere.”

Eddie reaches for its cheek to coax it into kissing him properly. Venom moves its mouth patiently, letting Eddie take the lead. They kiss for so long that their bodies get lost in each other, lazy thrusting devolving into a sloppy convergence, Venom’s liquid strands slowly sealing to Eddie from head to foot until Eddie realizes he can’t move anymore, can’t even move his mouth against Venom’s, because they are too intertwined into one sticky mess. They fall asleep.

“Oh god, are they dead?”

Eddie blinks blearily, waking to the sound of Anne panicking and Dan awkwardly poking him in the shoulder. “No, I think they’re OK,” Dan says. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed. 

Eddie groans and yawns, feeling well-rested for the first time in days and grateful to be waking up under more peaceful circumstances than Skirth looming over him in a lab. He lifts his head enough to see what Anne and Dan see: spiderwebs of symbiote matter stretched over his body and spilling onto the bed in slimy chaos, his pale skin pulling out of his torso and legs like putty woven grotesquely into the web. He reaches a hand to his face and feels gooey threads on his cheek and between his fingers, sticking and stretching when he tries to pull his hand away from his face. “Jesus Christ,” he says, marble-mouthed.

“Jesus, Eddie, your _teeth,”_ Anne says, horrified.

“What?” Eddie tries to press a finger to his front teeth, but there’s too much goo in the way. “Do they look more fucked up than usual?”

“They’re Venom’s,” Dan answers, leaning closer and peering curiously into Eddie’s mouth. “Buddy, are you two OK in there?”

Eddie shifts but finds his body is pinned to the bed. “Vee, baby, wake up. C’mon.”

Venom jerks awake, momentarily constricting Eddie before becoming aware of itself enough to untangle their mess and reshape into a small pile on Eddie’s stomach, curled up like a cat. Its head emerges, but it rests it against Eddie’s chest and closes its eyes. 

**_Need more sleep,_ **it says out loud.

Eddie experimentally opens and closes his mouth then taps his front teeth, confident that they are once again his own. “Sorry,” he says to Anne and Dan, who are both looking at him like they’ve only just realized how weird it is that he’s attached to an alien. “Thanks for checking on us, we’re not dead.”

“I’m glad to see you’re feeling better, Eddie,” Dan says. He smiles sweetly at him. “You had me really worried there for a minute.”

“Oh, thanks, Dan. You know, we gotta stop making a habit of you seeing me at my worst.”

“No, no, I’m just happy I get to help.”

“Eddie, I thought you two were resting,” Anne interrupts, sounding a bit jealous, but Eddie can’t parse out who exactly she’s jealous of in this situation. 

“What do you mean? We are.”

“I mean—please just don’t fuck so hard that your body turns to goo, maybe?”

Venom laughs.

Eddie opens his mouth to correct Anne, but then he realizes that it’s infinitely lamer to admit that they turned to goo just from kissing, so instead he says, “How long have we been in here?”

“A few hours,” Anne responds. “Do you want anything to eat? Dan and I are going to dinner.”

Venom opens its eyes and says, **_Please, anything chocolate. A lot of it._ **

“Yeah, whatever Vee wants,” Eddie agrees. 

“OK. We’ll be back in three hours. Be safe,” Anne says as she and Dan leave the room.

It feels too quiet in the apartment after they leave. Eddie looks up at the ceiling and runs his hands through Venom, pulling at its threads and coiling it around his fingers in boredom. He can feel Venom’s strings weaving inside his body, so out of curiosity he tries to move the internal strings himself.

**_What are you doing?_ **

_Exploring our body._

Venom lazily lifts its head off Eddie’s chest and buries its face in his neck. **_I missed you so much._ **

Eddie manages to pull two tentacles out of his sides and focuses all his attention on using them to shimmy out of his boxer briefs. 

**_Oh wow, that’s very good, Eddie,_ ** Venom says proudly, then it takes control of the tentacles and wraps both of them around Eddie’s cock. **_Show me what else you can do._ **

Eddie arches his back, tilts his head back and sighs, “Fuck.” 

Venom turns into a small human shape above him, seating itself on his cock and extending two limbs out to wrap around Eddie’s wrists, pinning his arms above his head. **_Fuck me, Eddie._ **

Eddie cants his hips up. Venom tightens around his cock and bears down on him. **_Good. Faster._ **It leans over—its body solid and heavy against Eddie’s abdomen—and seals their mouths together.

Their minds meld together so they can thrust in perfect rhythm. After a few minutes, Eddie materializes another tentacle and moves it toward his ass, and Venom once again takes over so it can perfectly stimulate his prostate. When they are both close to coming, Venom sits up on Eddie’s lap and rides him fast and hard, its tendrils still holding his arms above his head. They feel their orgasm together, both inside and outside their bodies, and Venom reduces to an undefined puddle over Eddie’s crotch. 

“Hey, c’mon, it’s sensitive down there,” Eddie says through panted breaths. He makes no attempt to actually move Venom himself.

The liquid stirs until Eddie feels the unmistakable razor teeth against the side of his cock. **_Your semen is delicious._ **

_Do you think you could make me hard again right away? ‘Cause then you could suck me off and get some more._

Venom vibrates with excitement. It works from the inside to fill his cock back up, and it’s such a strangely pleasurable sensation that Eddie sees stars for a second. Eddie reaches a hand down and pushes at the black mass, encouraging Venom to work its maw all the way down his shaft until he feels teeth against his balls. A tendril slithers around his arm, fusing with his skin all the way up to his neck, while another limb branches off to tweak his already hard nipples. The blowjob is so viscerally intense that Eddie doesn’t notice that he’s being subsumed until he comes again. It’s only as he’s taking shuddering breaths that he realizes Venom’s mass is woven all through his body from his feet to his face in a much more complete and less messy convergence than earlier. 

**_My Eddie,_ **Venom says, sounding drunk as it rubs its face between his thighs. 

_Hey, bring your face up here._

**_No._ **Venom kisses the meat of his inner thigh.

Eddie lifts his head off the bed, controlling the symbiote matter beneath him to help prop his neck up, but he can’t see Venom’s face under the blanket of black threads. It’s impossible to see or feel where Eddie ends and Venom begins. 

_Come on, let me see you,_ Eddie begs.

 **_I’m busy._ ** Venom licks its tongue down the length of Eddie’s thigh, over his groin, up the other thigh to his knee. **_You’re so good for me. Perfect._ **

Eddie adjusts his hips and tries to think of a way to make this exchange less one-sided. Curiously, he digs his fingers into the threads on his chest and pulls straight up. The material easily adheres to his fingertips and stretches up from his chest in a mesmerizing pattern. He brings it to his lips and copies Venom’s ministrations, biting and sucking it as it wraps around his hand. It crawls minutely up into his gums and lips, separating like veins of a leaf under the surface of his skin, and when he licks his tongue across his hand he feels the alien cells sticking to his taste buds and moving their way down his throat.

 **_Fuck, Eddie, that feels good._ ** Venom bumps its head against Eddie’s knee and leaves it there as if incapacitated. **_It’s like you’re eating me._ **

Eddie stops moving his mouth. _No, too weird. I can’t keep doing it if you’re gonna be weird about it._

**_No, please, don’t stop. It’s not weird. Feels good. You’re so good._ **

Eddie flushes at the praise. He continues biting and sucking, growing more confident as Venom groans and writhes, and Eddie can feel that there is nothing he can do that will hurt their bodies, so he rips and tears with his teeth, pulling more and more of his symbiote into his mouth until he’s so overwhelmed by Venom’s reception of the act that he swallows. Venom goes down like liquid while also sticking to the lining of Eddie’s throat, and then it suddenly shudders with pleasure and sucks itself fully back inside his body, leaving Eddie naked and alone on the bed when Dan and Anne knock on his door.

 **_I’m going to need to stay in here for a little while,_ ** Venom says from deep within Eddie’s chest cavity. **_So good. My Eddie._ **

Eddie laughs, then shouts at Anne and Dan that he’ll be out in a minute. As he puts clothes on, he says, “You’ve barely said one coherent thing since we got here.”

**_How about this: fuck off._ **

Eddie laughs again and kisses the tendril wrapped around his index finger. It’s the only part of Venom still on the outside of his body, and he wonders if it’s now permanently fixed there.

 **_I think you have to be the one to decide if it stays there forever,_ ** Venom says. **_It won’t make any difference to me physically, but emotionally, it would affect me very much if you kept it there._ **

_In a good way?_ Eddie walks through the hall and finds Dan and Anne sitting on barstools drinking beer at the kitchen counter. 

**_Of course in a good way. Rings are a human commitment of love, and I love you the most._ **

“Uh-oh, what’s that smile for?” Anne asks sweetly.

Eddie leans his elbows on the kitchen counter. “Just Vee being sappy.” He spots a takeout bag on the other side of the counter, but Venom makes no effort to reach for it.

**_Can you get that for me? I’m still stuck._ **

“Well, you’re looking better than you did earlier,” Anne continues.

Dan slides the takeout bag over to Eddie and says, “You know, we had to share Venom for a little bit, and I was surprised at how human his thoughts are. _Its_ thoughts, sorry. It seems like a ‘he’ to me because it reminds me so much of you, Eddie.”

**_That’s because I learn human emotion and behavior from you._ **

“Yeah, it, you know, shares a lot of my characteristics because of our bond,” Eddie explains. He opens one of the takeout boxes and gets a whiff of chocolate syrup. It’s a giant chocolate brownie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. _Babe, I still can’t eat. You’re gonna have to come out to get this._

**_Can’t._ **

_Oh my god, you baby. We’ll just take it back to the room._

**_You just ate me, but you can’t eat that?_ **

_Don’t._

**_Now who’s the baby?_ **

“You OK, Eddie?” Anne asks.

Eddie closes the container and picks up the bag. “Yeah, we just can’t eat this yet. Still trying to, um, adjust to being back together. Thank you, though. This is perfect.” He leans over and kisses Anne on the forehead, like he’s reverted back to an old autopilot setting. He blinks awkwardly at her then turns to Dan.

Dan raises his hands, palms out defensively. “Don’t look at me, I’m not here to tell you what to do.”

“Sorry, um. We probably have some things we need to talk about at some point whenever all this shit blows over.” He scratches the back of his head. A lock of hair falls into his eyes. “Did you guys see any cops while you were out?”

“No,” Anne says. “Nothing in the local news yet either.”

“Oh, really? Well, alright then. Uh, I might just wait ‘til morning before I try to do anything or go anywhere.” Eddie awkwardly backs away from the counter. “You guys have a nice night.”

“You, too!” Anne calls after him as Eddie walks quickly back to the guest room. He can hear Anne and Dan laughing as he shuts the door.

Since Venom is still recovering, Eddie putters around the room and organizes all his stuff in his overnight bag, then he heads to the bathroom to finally shower and shave. While the water pours over him, he touches the crook of his elbow, the space below his collarbone and the skin around his navel, remembering how it felt to have all those lines coming out of him and amazed at how seamlessly Venom healed him in the hospital. The only physical evidence left from his near-death experience is that his stomach is flat instead of slightly bowed out, his hips a bit sharper. He puts on a pair of gym shorts after the shower and runs a beard trimmer over his face, then, impulsively, he holds the razor up to his forehead and shaves back a part of his hairline. Venom is quiet, but it extends a limb into the cabinet under the sink and hands Eddie a pair of scissors. 

Anne and Dan are still in the kitchen when he emerges from the bathroom shirtless and with a haphazard buzzcut, and they both make surprised noises when he walks through the hall. 

"Looks good, Eddie!" Anne yells.

"He's so effortlessly handsome," Dan mutters.

**_Should we tell Dan that our hearing is very good?_ **

_No._

Back in the guest room, Venom takes control and fully emerges out of Eddie so it can eat the several containers of chocolate desserts. Eddie can’t taste or feel any of it going down, which is nice. He hopes he’ll be able to eat again soon, but he is glad not to have to worry about it for the time being.

_You’ll need to eat something more than chocolate soon, won’t you?_

**_No, I ate someone while I was with Anne._ **

_What?_

**_I was dying, so she let me eat someone. It helped._ **

_Where? Who?_

**_She knows a lot of bad guys that walked free, you know, from her job? As a lawyer?_ ** Venom says sarcastically. It finishes the food and lies down on the bed, curling itself onto its side to fit its massive body into the small space. **_We need more sleep._ **

_You said you only need sleep to be close to me._

**_Yes. I need to be close to you._ ** Venom moves like liquid, pushing Eddie out of itself and wrapping him in tentacles. **_And we are still very tired. And weak. You got so small while I was gone._ **

_Alright, I really didn’t._ Eddie burrows deeper into the tentacles. _I could afford to lose a few pounds, it’s fine._

Venom squeezes him so tight it almost hurts. **_Don’t disparage your body, Eddie. Once you can eat again, I’ll make sure we digest things properly so you can get your weight back up._ **

_My point actually was for you to stop worrying about me, not to make you worry more. I promise you can chill out about my body._

Venom caresses the side of Eddie’s face with the point of a tentacle. **_They implanted so much plastic in you to keep you alive. I’m so sorry._ **

_You had to incompletely bond with Anne and Dan to stay alive, so I’m sorry, too._

Venom forms its head from out of Eddie’s chest, then it closes its eyes and pushes its forehead against his. **_You are mine._ **

_Yeah. I am. You’re mine, too._ Eddie kisses its cheek, then fits their foreheads back together. _Now go to sleep._


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie has a plan to expose the SFPD and keep him and Venom safe.

Eddie shifts and squirms in his sleep. Viscous tentacles stir lazily around him, rubbing his side and coaxing him to settle, but he’s too restless. 

**_It’s the middle of the night. Why aren’t you asleep?_ **Venom asks, clearly annoyed at being woken up.

 _We slept most of the fucking day, babe,_ Eddie responds, also annoyed. He turns to his back and laces his fingers with a tentacle draped over his stomach. _I need to make some calls, get started on some stuff._

**_You’re going to make calls in the middle of the night?_ **

Eddie sighs. _I’m just gonna get my phone and check some things. Feel free to do whatever you want._

Venom grumbles a complaint but hands Eddie his phone in the dark anyway. Eddie curls up on his side and taps on the screen, squinting to protect his eyes while he clicks through local news alerts. Venom, wide awake now, splits a limb into several fingers to gently tickle Eddie’s back.

_Oh fuck, that feels really good._

**_Anne had to share memories of you to keep me alive. She used to do this for you._ **

_Yeah, she spoiled the shit out of me. Did nice stuff for me all the time._ Not finding anything useful in the local news, Eddie clicks around until he finds some of the sites that Dre must have been referring to, message boards of evidence compiled for the conspiracy theory that Eddie has a monster that’s going to take down the SFPD. A lot of people think he’s a werewolf, which he finds flattering.

Venom moves its pseudo-fingers to the back of Eddie’s head and massages his scalp. **_Your hair feels good like this. Soft._ **

_Thank you._ Eddie scans and scrolls, quickly skimming over everyone’s feverish posts until he gets to a picture that makes him stop. It’s blurry, but it looks like a skinny Black guy, hair sticking up in every direction, standing on a street corner with his hands shoulder-width apart as if he’s holding something between them, but the something between them is just black threads. Eddie abruptly sits up on the side of the bed, causing Venom’s tendrils to latch forcefully to his skin.

“Vee, look at this.”

Venom pulls its head out of Eddie’s shoulder and peers at the phone. **_That looks like me._ **

“Doesn’t that look like Dre, you know, the kid from lockup? How could he possibly—what the fuck is that in his hands?”

Venom keeps staring at the picture, its milky eyes narrowing to slits, and about 15 seconds pass before it says, **_Yeah, I think that’s me._ **

“Alright, what the fuck do you mean by that?”

Again, Venom takes its time before answering. **_Everything happened very quickly when we pretended to attack Dre. I do remember thinking he felt strong, like a good host. It’s possible that I…_ **

Eddie suddenly remembers hearing Dre’s voice carrying through the walls of the precinct: _"It infected me.”_

“Oh my god,” Eddie says.

 **_That’s strange._ ** Venom swirls around and inside Eddie, circling back on itself as if checking its body for injuries. **_You’d think I would notice if part of myself went missing._ **

“No. No, no.” Eddie stands and paces around the room, his eyes now fully adjusted to the dark. “We touch people all the time, there’s no way we could just accidentally infect someone. Like, Anne. Anne would definitely have part of us— _you_ in her.”

**_Well, Anne is not exactly a perfect match for me, physically. Dre might be._ **

“Oh my fucking god. If he has part of you in him, what would that—what does that mean, exactly?” Eddie looks back at his phone. “Actually, you know what, I can probably find out. Goddamn it. We’ve gotta get to that kid.”

Venom is quiet as Eddie works. He sits back on the edge of the bed and scrolls through several posts until he finds some that sound like Dre could have written them. Venom tries to surreptitiously move through his body to lower his blood pressure and ease his rising panic, but Eddie is too in tune with it not to notice. 

“Thanks, you don’t have to try to pretend like you’re not doing that,” Eddie says softly, still looking at his phone.

**_Doing what?_ **

Eddie smiles despite himself. He moves the pad of his thumb from the screen of his phone to the ring around his index finger and rubs it, and the ring rubs him back. When he pulls his thumb away, the ring sticks to his skin until Eddie whispers at it to let go. 

“Sounds like Dre’s kind of like one of the hybrids, but more like Skirth,” Eddie says distractedly, just trying to work through his thoughts. “Like, not fucked up. I think he might live near our apartment? Looks familiar.” Eddie zooms in on a picture then zooms back out. “Goddamn it. He says he’s gonna ‘single-handedly get the police presence out the projects.’ We have to get to him, this kid’s gonna get himself killed.”

**_Interesting, it seems all the best hosts for me are hopelessly reckless._ **

“Yeah, you have a type.” Eddie makes a sock account and replies to one of Dre’s posts. He stares at his phone for a second, as if Dre is going to respond immediately. A yawn escapes him.

Venom presses gentle hands against his shoulders and perches its head in the crook of his collarbone. Against his ear, it whispers, **_Try to get a little more sleep. I think you need it._ **

“Oh man, you really are stealing right out of Anne’s playbook.” He yawns again. “Maybe I’ll fall asleep if you tickle my back some more?”

Venom takes the phone out of Eddie’s hand and pushes him gently onto his side, then it pulls the covers over them and once again begins tickling Eddie’s back. **_You’re so spoiled._ **

“Mm. Yeah.”

When Eddie wakes up just a couple hours later, he immediately checks his phone, but there’s no new message from Dre. He remembers how late Dre slept in lockup and assumes it will probably be a few hours before he responds, but that doesn’t stop him from obsessively checking his phone every five seconds anyway. While he’s scrolling and brushing his teeth, his stomach growls. 

**_Do you feel well enough to eat now?_ **Venom asks as it applies pressure through his abdomen.

 _Yeah, I think so._ His stomach growls louder. _Shit, yeah, I’m starving._

Despite how early it is, Dan is already gone by the time Eddie walks in the kitchen, and Anne is dressed for work but taking her time drinking coffee and looking at her phone. She looks up at Eddie in surprise, her eyes fixed on his hair.

“I already forgot you did that,” she says, gesturing to her own hair. “You look tough. Eddie, my big tough guy.”

Eddie smiles at her then pours himself a cup of coffee from the pot. “Like I’ve been through hell and back, huh?”

“Yeah, you poor thing. Did you sleep well?”

He puts some eggs on the stove and scrambles them as he says, “No. I’ve got a lot to do today, too much nervous energy.” Venom brings his coffee to his lips for him; he drinks. “I’m gonna try to head out of town maybe tonight. Gotta make some calls first, make sure I have a place to stay.”

“So do you want to tell me what your plan is, or is it mostly illegal?”

“No, it’s mostly journalism.”

“Hm. Somehow that seems worse.”

Eddie walks over to the table to join Anne, with a plate in each hand and a mug in a tentacle. When he sets a plate of eggs in front of Anne, she thanks him with a kiss to his cheek.

He squints at her. “What are we doing?”

Venom says, **_You’re eating breakfast,_ **at the same time that Anne says, “Um, having breakfast?”

Eddie closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Both of you know what I mean, c’mon.”

“Well, um,” Anne starts awkwardly. She takes a bite of eggs to give herself time to think. Then, “I shared so much with Vee. And then Dan did, too—well, not as much as me, but some. And like I said yesterday, its love for you is all-consuming, and it’s impossible not to, um, feel that. I think I might be a little bit in love with you? And Dan kind of is, too.”

Now Eddie is the one eating to avoid talking, and it’s nice that he is able to swallow without feeling like he’s going to immediately throw up. “Dan is irredeemably straight though.”

“Yes, that’s true. But we’ve all had a goo alien live in our bodies, so I don’t think we can pretend like anything makes sense anymore.”

Venom pulls its head out of Eddie’s shoulder. **_Stop calling me goo, Anne._ **

“Oh, right, I’m sorry. I should’ve said ‘sticky monster.’”

**_Yeah, I like that better._ **

Eddie nudges his head against Venom’s. “Alright, so, what do you want to do, Annie?”

“I don’t know.” She stands up and takes her plate to the sink. “I have to get to work, and you have a lot to do today. I’m kind of down for whatever, and Dan is cool with us doing whatever.”

“You mean like sex? With me?” Eddie says as he follows Anne out to the front door.

“No, not today, obviously. And I’m not asking you to be in a relationship.” She stands in front of him at the door, looking up at him. “Dan and I are staying together, and you can do whatever you want. Seriously, with how intense Vee’s love is, I’d be getting in bed with everybody if I were in your shoes. It’s too much. I’m going to kiss you goodbye now, if that’s alright with you.”

Eddie raises his eyebrows and nods stupidly. He expects just a peck on the lips, but instead Anne pulls him down and moves her mouth against his, hard and fast before she lets him go and leaves with a, “feed the cat, please,” over her shoulder.

Once they’re alone, Venom says, **_My love is not too much for you, is it?_ **

“What?” Eddie stares at the closed door. “No, no, it’s not.”

After several seconds, Venom takes control of Eddie’s legs and walks him back toward the kitchen. **_You need to eat more. And start making calls. Stop thinking about Anne._ **

_Wow, alright,_ Eddie says with a laugh. _You and Anne must’ve had a wild few days together._

 **_We don’t have time to sort through that right now, Eddie._ **Venom extends limbs to pull out a chair from the kitchen table, then it sets Eddie into it, scoots him up to the table and brings a forkful of eggs to his mouth.

“Alright, alright. Jesus,” Eddie says as he chews. “I’m here, I’m focused.”

The next few hours pass in a blur, Eddie not moving from his spot as he works, and Venom quietly feeding him—which should be weird, but Eddie hardly notices until his stomach aches.

 _Ugh, wait, why are we still eating? Have you been giving me food this entire time?_ Eddie looks at his watch for the first time all morning and finds that it’s past noon. In a panic he checks to see if Dre has responded; he hasn’t.

**_You’ve been very focused, but yes, I’m trying to get your weight back up._ **

_And you think that’s gonna happen today?_

**_No. It will take a few days._ ** Venom curls its strands into the lining of Eddie’s stomach. **_Sorry, I’ll make it stop hurting._ **

Eddie gets up and stretches his back and makes more coffee. While waiting for the pot to brew, he checks his phone again.

“Oh my god, he responded,” he says. “He wants to meet me, we got to go.” 

Eddie pours his coffee into a tumbler and grabs his jacket. Venom vibrates with excitement inside him, asking if it can hop buildings again.

It seems about the same level of risk as taking his motorcycle, so Eddie agrees to it. Venom assures him it can safely hold inanimate objects in the latticework of its body, but when they arrive in Dre’s neighborhood the tumbler no longer has any coffee in it.

They meet Dre at a busy playground fenced in between apartment buildings. He’s swinging on a creaky swing set and waves excitedly as Eddie approaches. Eddie feels a little nervous with the amount of people, but there’s music playing from one of the apartments above, children laughing and yelling, parents sitting on benches talking to each other—Eddie is the only white person around, but nobody even looks in his direction. 

“Shit, man, you really got out, huh?” Dre asks with a smile. He hops off the swing and gives Eddie dap.

“Yeah, long, miserable story. Listen, man, I’m sorry I don’t have more time, but I really need to—”

“Yeah, bruh, I know, I know. Check it out.” 

Dre takes a step back, looks to his left and right, then clasps his hands together and pulls them apart, revealing a discreet portion of Venom’s threads. He weaves them between his fingers and moves them in a wave, showing off how easily he can control it before he sucks it back into his palms.

“Y’all gave it to me on purpose, right?” he says casually. “‘Cause you need help taking out the cops?”

“No, no, we’re not—we’re not ‘taking out’ the cops, Dre. And we didn’t give you... _that_ on purpose, it was a fluke. We’re here to get it back from you, man.”

Dre’s face falls. “What? You can’t take it back. No, no, no, this can’t be right.” He tugs at one of his locs and sits back on a swing. Words tumble out of him. “You’re supposed to be cool, man. I’ve watched your old stuff, you were all about sticking up for the voiceless and calling out all the bullshit. I thought you were the type of dude that would give me this power ‘cause if _you_ came in and helped here, then you’d get to call yourself a hero and we would owe you and shit, but you’re better than that. I thought that's why you gave it to me."

**_Eddie. He should keep it._ **

Eddie sighs and sits on the swing next to Dre so he doesn’t have to look him in the eye. “How old are you?”

“I’m 20.”

“Goddamn it.” Eddie laughs humorlessly. “I don’t know what shit you read online about me, but the truth is I’m a dumbass. All the reporting I did, I was so self-absorbed, I wanted to help people, yeah, but I also wanted credit for it. I didn’t even think that much about how my actions could hurt the people I meant to help, like, that’s how I ended up in that precinct, actually. And, uh, I’m a fucking coward, man. It was easy to investigate the police, because I knew they couldn’t touch me. I knew my job and my fame and my lawyer girlfriend would protect me, and even now, this shit I’m in, I’ve got an alien inside me to keep me safe, so I’m not a fucking hero and never will be.”

Venom squeezes internally around Eddie’s shoulders.

Dre gives him a hard look. “Yeah, but _I_ could be.” He gestures to the apartment buildings. “The cops been coming here with their freaky zombies for a while, man. They come in and harass us and throw us in lockup for no reason, and there ain’t shit we can do about it, except now we can. One of the new ones tried to pick up my boy yesterday, and I just—man, I was able to just reach a tentacle out and grab him and get him away, and the cop didn’t even see me, but he was scared. I saw that he was fucking scared.”

“So they don’t know you have it?”

“Nah, man, they probably think it’s you out here. I ain’t gonna hurt nobody, just scare ‘em. We’re sick of this shit here, Eddie.”

A long pause stretches between them. Eddie watches as a toddler wavers with uncertainty at the top of a slide. A preschooler runs to the foot of it and encourages her to come down. When the toddler slides right into the older kid’s arms, they both laugh and cheer.

Eddie says, “Alright. Keep it.”

Dre jumps off the swing and buries Eddie in a hug, nearly knocking him over. 

Eddie pats his back. “If you get killed, though, remember that I have to carry that guilt with me for the rest of my fucking life.”

Dre pulls away from him but grips his shoulder hard. “Hey, stay in touch through those sock accounts. We gotta stick together.”

Venom crawls up through Eddie’s shoulder and into Dre’s hand. **_You would’ve been a very strong host for me, Dre. Be safe._ **

“Shit, that’s cool,” Dre says as he removes his hand.

As they leave, Eddie and Venom let Dre get a glimpse of Venom scaling a building. Later, Dre privately messages Eddie a series of excited emojis and exclamation points.

Back at Anne’s apartment, Eddie feeds the cat then works twice as hard as he did in the morning, motivated by his meeting with Dre. Around sundown, he takes the cable car to his old station and keeps his head down the whole way, even the two times he hears police sirens outside. Walking in the front door of the station feels like being in a fishbowl, like any moment someone is going to notice him and put him back in police custody, but then Richard sees him and doesn’t recognize him until Eddie makes eye contact and smiles. Richard’s eyes widen, and he comes around the front desk to wrap Eddie in a hug, and Eddie relaxes into his hold.

“Where you been, bro?” Richard lets him go and looks him over, with worry behind his eyes. “I thought you were getting your show back.”

“No, I’ve been through way too much lately. What about you, how’s your daughter?”

**_Eddie. We don’t have time for this._ **

_I know._

“Ah, man, I don’t think she’s ever coming back. She loves MIT.” He gestures toward the elevators. “You can go ahead, Jack’s expecting you.”

On the elevator ride up to Jack’s office, Eddie taps his hands nervously against his thighs and falls into a steady breathing pattern with Venom’s help. When Jack offers him a boisterous greeting and asks him if he’s changed his mind about starting his show back up, Eddie deflates a little.

“Did you even open my emails?” he asks as he takes a seat across from his old boss. He pointedly doesn’t look out the window; he still can only deal with heights when Venom’s the one in control.

“Of course I did,” Jack replies. He steeples his fingers together on top of his desk. “You could do this story on your first week of episodes.”

“That’s not—it’s a story about _me,_ Jack. I can’t report on myself, especially when it’s ongoing. Seriously, did you open my emails? I laid out all the reporters I’ve contacted and confirmed for fact-checking, interviews, evidence-gathering—I’m heading out of town tonight to avoid getting arrested again, but trust me, if we don’t get this out there, things are gonna get worse really fast. I mean, I thought the SFPD was out of control before this, but this is…We are so far beyond the pale, Jack.”

“Do you have any evidence for these…” Jack flips through papers on his desk and stops and squints at one of them as he continues, “hybrids? Is that what we’re calling them?”

“I’m working on it,” Eddie mumbles.

“Eddie, I need evidence. This is an outlandish assertion we’d be making, we need video, eye-witness testimony, science to back it up. Do you have _anything?”_

**_Me. You have me._ **

Eddie sighs. “It’s an alien life form that requires an oxygen-rich host to survive, but they’ve figured out how to harvest cells for an injection that gives the host enhanced abilities, you know, without being saddled with a second conscience. Safe to assume it’s a nearly unlimited resource, too.”

“Eddie. What the fuck are you talking about?”

Eddie puts his hands together and pulls them apart slowly, revealing Venom’s tendrils in an imitation of what Dre did. Jack leans back in his seat.

“Mine, uh, has the consciousness,” Eddie says stupidly. “It’s sentient, I mean. But they just have dead matter, like a cheap knockoff.”

“OK.” Jack laughs. “I believe you. But you only have proof about yourself, which is what the police are looking for, aren’t they? If you want this to be a story about the police abusing their power by harnessing alien technology, it complicates it a bit that you also have an alien inside you. The cops think you’re a criminal. They’re just going to try to shine the spotlight back on you.”

“You were just offering to give me my show back. What, was I gonna investigate the cops from prison? Bring a camera crew into my cell?” Eddie points his whole hand at Jack. “This is why I can’t do the story. I was treated like shit by the SFPD, and they didn’t even have any evidence that I had an alien inside me. Hell, the alien wasn’t even with me for a few days, and they literally tortured me to try to find it. They tortured me.”

Jack waves him off. “Police treat people like shit every day, Eddie. You need to be removed from the story completely or else this won’t work the way you want it to.” He moves his hands apart the way Eddie did. “That thing you did to show me that black shit, don’t do that. Don’t show people, don’t tell anyone. You just keep in touch with your contacts and send us everything you find.”

A weight drops from Eddie’s shoulders. “Really? That easy?”

“Well, the work you sent in is your best. You look like shit, though, when was the last time you slept? How many days have you stayed up working on this?”

“Uh, just today actually. Woke up early this morning.”

“Christ. That drive has always been your best quality.” 

**_No, it’s not,_ ** Venom says in Eddie’s ear. **_I’m pretty sure that’s caused by a chemical imbalance in your brain._ **

Jack’s landline buzzes, then Richard’s voice carries over the speaker, _“I’ve got two officers down here asking questions, Jack.”_

**_Oh fuck._ **

Eddie jumps to his feet and quickly shakes Jack’s hand and thanks him for taking him seriously, then he heads out to the stairwell and Venom takes over so they can get down to the emergency exit in a matter of moments. They pull a fire alarm on their way out and run so fast that they are back at Anne’s apartment in less than 10 minutes. 

As soon as Eddie enters the apartment, Anne shoves a backpack and a duffel bag at him and says, “Cops at the top of the hill, you got to go _now.”_ She then kisses him and pushes him out the door.

The next several hours pass in a literal blur. Venom takes over but uses Eddie’s memory for directions to Los Angeles. It runs on all fours through trees and sleepy neighborhoods, staying close to I-5 but remaining hidden in the dark and breezing right past cars driving 85 miles per hour. When Eddie regains control of his body outside of a nondescript apartment building in a part of the city he’s unfamiliar with, he feels weak and disoriented and like his brain has been scrambled.

**_Sorry. I’ll fix what I can, but you need to eat something._ **

_I’ll be alright. What about you?_

**_I’m a little tired._ **

_You did good. Nobody’s ever made it to L.A. that fast. Ever._

Even so, it’s past 2 in the morning when Eddie buzzes into the apartment. A short white woman with a shaved head and an intimidating bone structure lets him in.

“Twinsies,” she says in a surprisingly sweet, high voice, pointing to Eddie’s head. “I’m Deena. Sorry you have to sleep on the couch.”

“Deena and Dora? Cute,” Eddie replies. He puts his bags down by the couch and riffles through them for candy bars. 

“Yeah, Dora’s asleep, but I know she wants to talk to you in the morning. I have to take our kids to school before work, so I need to get back to bed, too. There’s linens in the hallway closet by the bathroom, which you unfortunately have to share with two small children. Do you need anything? Want something real to eat?” She points at the chocolate bar Eddie’s scarfing down.

“Thanks,” Eddie says around a mouthful. “Does Dora not have a weird appetite? Chocolate is probably the main staple of my diet.”

“Oh, right, I forgot. Well, then I’ll just let you get settled in.” She walks down the hall, flipping light switches as she goes. “Nice to meet you, Eddie.”

“You, too, Deena.”

_Vee? You awake?_

Venom stirs in his gut. **_Still tired. We need more food._ **

Eddie eats through all the food Anne packed for them—mostly chocolate, an enormous amount of chocolate—but he still feels hollow inside, so Venom carries him into the kitchen and makes him heat up a frozen pizza. He dozes off while it’s cooking, so Venom carries him back to the couch and keeps him awake until he finishes the pizza, then they both fall asleep, with Eddie still fully clothed and Venom wrapped around him like a sleeping bag, forgoing Deena’s offer of linens. They wake up to tiny hands pulling curiously at Venom’s threads.

“Hey, hey, leave the alien man alone,” Deena says sternly, but the tiny hands continue, sifting Venom through their fingers like sand. 

Eddie groans and sits up, Venom remaining like a loose blanket around him. In front of him are a boy and a girl of elementary-school age, the boy remarkably similar in appearance to Dora and the girl more like Deena. They giggle as they play with blanket-Venom.

 **_Mm, that feels nice,_ **Venom says out loud as it stirs awake. 

The kids jump back.

“Yeah, see, not so fun anymore when the slime talks back, huh?” Deena says. “Time to go, go, go, out the door, let’s go.” She herds her children toward the door, thrusting backpacks and lunchboxes upon them as they move. “We’re leaving, babe! Love you!”

“Love you, too!” Dora calls back as she appears out of her bedroom, still in her pajamas and rubbing sleep from her eyes. She smiles brightly when she sees Eddie. “Dee said you looked like crap when you got here, but you look OK to me. Significantly better than the last time I saw you. Coffee?”

Eddie stretches and sucks Venom back into his body, then he meets Dora in the kitchen and wraps her in a hug. 

“Thank you, Dora.”

“Oh. Um. You’re welcome.”

When Eddie steps away, several sticky threads connect his torso to Dora’s, like they’re a piece of chewed gum being pulled apart. Venom materializes more of itself and crawls around Dora in a childlike embrace, resting its head on her shoulder and rumbling its gratitude. Dora smiles and pats it awkwardly.

They drink coffee together, mostly in silence, because Dora doesn’t seem awake until after her first mug. In an attempt at casual small talk, Eddie asks about her kids.

“So, did you each carry one of them?”

Dora furrows her brow then pushes her glasses up. “What?”

“Your kids—you had your son, and Deena had your daughter?”

“What? No, they’re—I had them. Deena is trans.”

**_What does that mean? What are you guys talking about?_ **

“Oh,” Eddie says lamely. “I’m sorry. Not for her being trans! For being, you know, invasive. I was just trying to…” He gives up.

Dora squints at him like he’s a problem she’s trying to work out. “You’re a little bit stupid, aren’t you?”

Eddie’s whole body tickles with Venom’s laughter. 

“Yeah,” Eddie says.

After a few more sips of coffee, Dora says, “So I’ve been thinking.”

“Awesome, love that already.”

“Well, actually, I’ve been doing more than that. I, um, stole some stuff from the police lab. I can do blood tests, like I did on you, to determine if someone is a good match for an injection. And I stole enough to develop, oh, probably about 50 injections. We’d have to handpick volunteers of course, but—”

“Whoa, Skirth, hold on. That sounds like—you sound like you’re trying to build an army.”

**_I like that idea._ **

“No, no,” Dora says reasonably. “The _police department_ is building an army. The good news for us is that not one of the injections I performed for them was a reliable match, so they will likely die within the year. But it’s not like I’m the only scientist they can intimidate into doing their work, and they might figure it out, especially once the current hybrids begin weakening. What we could do is a kind of insurance, you know, just in case.”

**_She’s making good points, Eddie._ **

Eddie cracks his knuckles one by one. “I don’t know. I guess I just don’t see how it would solve any of our problems to make 50 random people really strong.”

“It would have to be people that could make a difference, that have some kind of influence—like how Anne is a lawyer, she’s dealt with a lot of cops personally. Or, like, your journalist friends, or political activists, scientists that the SFPD may be contacting right now…”

“Or, uh, people who deal with police harassment regularly. I have some homeless friends that could benefit from it. Oh, and I’m sure I could find names of Black kids that are stopped and searched and arrested at disproportionately higher rates than everybody else, they might be interested in this.”

**_Dre would have some opinions on this, we should ask him._ **

_Oh yeah, good idea._

“Oh, that’s not—I wasn’t thinking in those terms at all,” Dora says. She shakes her head. “That could be a better approach. We would have to be very careful, though, because I don’t want to take advantage of homeless people and experiment on them again. That’s not what this is.”

“No, of course not. Say, theoretically, Venom and I are willing to donate some cells, do you have everything you need to be able to create injections?”

“I already have 50, I doubt we’ll even be able to use all of those. I can’t imagine I would need to extract any material from you and Venom. But yes, theoretically, I have the resources, just no lab.”

“Alright, I’m just thinking long-term. Like, if we really did need an army, it’s nice to know we could make one.”

**_Ooh, yes, I like the idea of me being the resource given to people who need to fight the police._ **

_Nobody’s fighting the police, sweetheart._

**_I thought that’s what we’ve been doing this whole time?_ **

“Is it talking to you?” Dora asks.

“Yeah, always. Sorry, I respond to it in my head.”

Eddie’s phone buzzes with a text from Anne that’s just a video she took of her TV showing a local news segment. 

“That was fast,” he says, mostly to himself. “This looks like a friend of a friend that I contacted yesterday, he must’ve been able to find some witnesses for your cop hybrids to be able to get the story out this fast. This is great.” He hits play.

_“...Vigilante has been secretly terrorizing the Bay Area for months. Police are doing everything to find the criminal, disgraced reporter Eddie Brock, in an attempt to figure out what exactly gives him the enhanced skills we’ve caught on tape, as you can see here. The San Francisco Police Department had him in custody, but he escaped 48 hours ago after assaulting several police officers, two of whom are still in the hospital. Since escaping custody, Eddie Brock has accused the SFPD of having the same kind of enhanced skills that he himself has, with no proof to back up his claims. We’re going now to an interview with Officer Miller of the SFPD to clarify the outlandish claims of ‘alien technology’...”_

Eddie sighs. “Fuck.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Been busy lately, so updates might be slower, especially as I sort out the plot of this. Also, like, if the movie can have a tenuous grasp on the reality of investigative journalism then so can I!!!!!


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie and Venom deal with being the subject of a local news story. Eddie interviews Dora about her time working for the police department.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PHEW sorry this update took so long, but there was a presidential election and an old hyperfixation coming back and biting me in the ass (destiel), so!!! Also this chapter ends on a cliffhanger, so if you're stressed by it and need a spoiler, you can always ask me in the comments and I'll tell you what's coming next.

_We probably shouldn’t have killed those cops._

**_Shh, Eddie, don’t think about it. Look around you._ **

Eddie, suspended within Venom’s body, reaches into their shared consciousness so he can see through the symbiote’s eyes. They are on a mountainside, hidden in a copse of trees, so high above the city that the air is wet, like they’re inside of a cloud. The view is breathtaking and makes Eddie’s problems seem so small. 

_How high up are we?_

**_High enough hopefully not to be noticed by any hikers._ **

_Thank you. For bringing me up here._

**_That was the worst panic I’ve felt from you. Skirth might be worried, you should call her._ **

The memory of their morning comes back to Eddie in fragments, the video Anne sent him followed by her phone call, yelling at each other, then the panic attack, Venom unable to stabilize Eddie because it started panicking, too. It took over their bodies in a messy frenzy and sprinted up a mountain until they had both calmed down.

 _I’m sorry I made you panic,_ Eddie says, embarrassed.

 **_Why would you be sorry?_ ** Venom eases Eddie’s body out from inside it and holds him in a kind of hammock between branches. **I’m** **_sorry that I can’t fix your body. Our body._ **

Eddie pulls at several threads around him and sends a mental image to Venom of the hug it gave Dora. Its head appears at Eddie’s shoulder, and it wraps limbs around him so he can hold it against him like a toddler. _You help me more than anything else ever has. Trust me, if you’d seen what I was like before you got here then you’d understand how much you help. It makes me feel kind of guilty that I don’t do more for you._

Venom nuzzles its head against his collarbone. **_You’ve shown me how to feel love and intimacy and many other human emotions and experiences that I never knew before_ ** — ** _kindness toward others, gentleness, for no other reason other than it’s just the way you are._ **

Eddie laughs. _Alright, so I guess we’re even._ He rubs Venom’s pseudo-back and rests his cheek against the top of its head. _I love you._

**_Mm, love you._ **

Eddie’s phone rings from somewhere in hammock-Venom. A tentacle holds it up to his ear.

“Eddie? You there?”

“Is this Solomon?” Eddie tries to keep the shock out of his voice and fails. “Why the hell would you be calling me?”

Solomon sighs. “I hope your location’s off and you’ve got a VPN—”

“The line’s secure, c’mon, give me some credit.”

Venom nips affectionately at Eddie’s neck. 

“You’ve seen the news?” Sol asks. 

“Yeah, I saw enough.” 

There’s a long pause before Sol says, “I’ve been talking to Marie and her aunt and your orthodontist friend. Nobody knows anything. And we’ve all got attorneys.”

“You—you’re helping me?” Eddie sits up straighter and clings tightly to Venom. “I haven’t talked to any of them, are they alright? I know they dragged in everybody I’ve interacted with lately—that one tattoo artist and the hairdresser, I don’t even know their names.” 

“Everybody’s fine. Reporters have been calling, but nobody’s giving them anything.” Sol sighs again then says, “What the hell are you gonna do, Ed?”

“I don’t know. I’ve got ideas, but please, don’t get involved. You’re better off not talking to me.”

**_I think he knows that._ **

“I know,” Sol says. “I just wanted to check on you, you know, because apparently I’m an idiot, and you’re impossible to stay mad at.”

Eddie ducks his head and smiles. “Well, I’m very cute, so.”

“Oh my god, I’m hanging up. Stay safe, Eddie.”

“Thanks, Sol.”

Before he even has a chance to hang up, his phone beeps, asking him if he wants to switch to another call. 

“Hey, Dora,” he says.

“Eddie! Thank god, you scared me to death. Are you OK?”

“Oh shit, I’m sorry, I should’ve called you.”

**_I told you that. I told you to call her._ **

Eddie scratches Venom’s back in an attempt to get it to shut up. “We’re alright. We’re, um, in the mountains. I don’t know where exactly, but we’ll be back in a little bit.” Eddie sits up in hammock-Venom and moves his phone to his other ear. “Hey, would you be willing to let me interview you? When I get back, I think it would be good.”

“Oh, um. I suppose. When will you be back?”

Venom takes the phone from Eddie and replies, **_Two hours. Bye, Skirth._ **It hangs up on her.

“Hey, why’d you—”

Venom cuts Eddie off with a kiss. It starts gentle but then it sucks Eddie’s tongue into its maw and suctions their mouths together completely. They kiss in perfect sync, while the threads of the hammock pull at Eddie’s clothes until he is naked. Venom then expands itself up and over them both, consuming them in darkness. Eddie pulls away from the kiss, easily unsuctioning himself from his symbiote’s face.

“If any hikers come up this high, are they just gonna see a giant black ball hanging between trees?”

**_I think the leaves are dense enough to hide us. But I put you in here because I don’t like you being so exposed. Hard to feel sexy when I’m worried about you._ **

Eddie threads his fingers through the back of Venom’s head. “Oh, so we’re doing sexy stuff in the woods? Post-panic attack sex in the woods?”

Venom growls and bites his neck. **_Stop being silly. I’m trying to make you feel better._ **

_You can do other things besides sex to make me feel better._

**_I did. I brought you to the top of this mountain and said nice things to you._ **

Eddie tangles his hands all through Venom’s threads and pulls it closer against him to continue the kiss. _I guess I get what Annie means about your love. It’s a lot._

 **_Annie could not handle it. She needs regular love, which I think she gets from Dan._ **Venom coils itself around Eddie’s wrists like ropes and then moves his arms until they are tied behind his back, then it extends the coils to his legs and forces him to reposition onto his knees, securing him in place with tendrils tied at his wrists and ankles. One more extends up to his mouth and gags him.

_Weird thing to do while talking about Anne and Dan._

Venom dips its head down and slides its tongue around the head of Eddie’s cock. **_And yet you’re already so turned on._ ** It licks at his precome. **_My Eddie._ **

_Where’d you even learn this?_

Venom moves its head back up and glares at Eddie. **_What’s the point of gagging you if it doesn’t shut you up?_ **

_I can pretend if you want. But this is really hot no matter what, so you just tell me what you want me to do and I’m game._

Sticky ropes crisscross over Eddie’s hips and chest and tighten around his shoulders, forcing him to remain completely still and suspended as Venom licks his cock. 

It takes its time teasing him with its tongue, but Eddie is so turned on that he has to tense up his entire body to stop himself from coming too early. He wants to enjoy this for as long as possible.

_Babe, can you—_

**_Shut up._ **

Eddie gasps and bucks his hips up, but the motion is uncomfortable against Venom’s ropes.

After a bit more teasing, Venom finally wraps its mouth around Eddie’s cock and extends small tendrils around it in a spiral, then it suctions and releases over and over again, spinning its tongue in an intoxicating rhythm, and the next time Eddie tries to buck his hips Venom growls and grazes its teeth painfully against his shaft. 

“Please,” Eddie tries to say around the gag. Tendrils immediately fill his mouth, forming into a ball that he has to hold between his teeth.

**_My Eddie, so spoiled. Come._ **

Eddie has no choice but to obey. He can feel Venom sucking the come right out of him and vibrating in pleasure as it swallows. It presses tendrils against his balls as if squeezing them dry, and Eddie’s body goes limp against the ropes, the ball of tendrils falling indelicately out of his mouth.

Eddie focuses on breathing, vaguely aware that Venom is blanketing around him in strong, thick limbs that release the ropes and reposition him comfortably on his side.

 **_Was that too much?_** Venom asks gently, its face smushed up against the back of Eddie’s neck.

“Mm, no, you’re perfect,” Eddie mumbles. He hugs a thick tentacle between his arms and positions the end of it under his cheek, snuggling against it. “Never been kinky enough to get tied up like that by a human, but I know I’m safe with you.”

_**You have fantasies deep in your subconscious, though. That’s where I learned it.** _

“Oh, that’s embarrassing,” Eddie replies, unembarrassed. “Hey, how is there so much of you all around us right now?”

**_Only a very small part of me is still inside you, can you feel it?_ **

_Yeah. Right there._ Eddie flexes his leg, feeling Venom shift inside his thigh. _Weird._

**_Try to sleep. I’ll carry us back._ **

Sure enough, when Eddie wakes up, he’s curled up on Dora’s couch still holding a tentacle between his arms. His body feels different, his stomach oddly full and his muscles swollen like he just worked out. 

_Did you eat somebody while I was asleep?_

**_Yes._ **

_Great._

Eddie has three missed calls and a few texts, but he ignores all of them in favor of setting up a makeshift interview space in Dora’s living room, with a nondescript background so he can film it. She’s hesitant at first, but the more Eddie talks to her and gently pushes her into answering his questions, the more willing she is to open up. She talks for nearly four hours. Venom is still and quiet inside Eddie, hanging on Dora’s every word.

When they’re done, they don’t say anything to each other for a while. As Eddie transfers the footage to his laptop to edit it, he wraps Dora in a hug and kisses the top of her head.

“I’m sorry,” he says gently, rubbing her back. “I totally get why you want to create an army.”

“Hey, that’s my wife. Hands off,” Deena jokes as she herds the kids through the door.

Eddie lets go of Dora just in time for her daughter to run into her arms.

Deena’s next, giving Dora a kiss before asking, “You guys doing OK?”

Dora only nods in response, then her kids both notice Eddie and ask him if they can “play with the alien.”

“Kids, what did I say?” Deena asks sternly. “Do not be weird. I said do not be weird, for god’s sake.”

Eddie waves her off and squats down to eye-level with the kids. “It’s alright,” he says. “Here.” He makes a fist then opens his hand palm up, revealing a ball of Venom. 

The kids excitedly reach for the ball, but when their fingers touch it, Eddie jerks his hand forward and spreads matter out from his fingertips like Silly String, causing both kids to scream in delight.

 **_That’s very good, Eddie,_ ** Venom says in his head. **_You can control my body in ways I’d never even think to do._ **

Motivated by the compliment, Eddie continues trying different things to entertain the kids, letting them poke and prod at him as he transforms his hands into giant fists, makes his tentacles look like actual octopus tentacles, manifests a pile of slime between his hands for the kids to shape—until the girl asks Eddie if the alien has a face, and Venom’s head pops out of his shoulder and says hello. As they stare at it, too shocked to say anything, Venom sticks its tongue out at them. They laugh. 

Dora eventually drags her kids away from Eddie and tells them to do their homework until dinnertime. Deena is in their bedroom working; she’s a computer programmer and can work from anywhere. With everyone cleared out of the living room, Eddie is able to edit the video of Dora’s interview and backs it up on several different devices. It’s dinnertime when he finally checks his phone. 

Anne has sent him a few more clips (all bad news) and some kind of social media post that’s been screenshotted and is going viral on several social media platforms. It was written by some person Eddie doesn’t recognize, but they claim to have seen the hybrid cops and believe the police force is dangerous, then they go on to describe in vivid detail their own harrowing experience of being arrested by the SFPD. 

“Eddie? Would you like to join us for dinner?” Dora asks from the kitchen while Eddie replies to Anne’s texts. 

“Hm? Oh, no, thanks. Vee ate somebody earlier,” Eddie says, still typing.

All the noise in the kitchen abruptly stops. 

**_Eddie, I don’t think you meant to say that._ **

Eddie turns, phone cradled in his hands, and finds Dora and Deena and both of their kids looking at him with wide eyes.

“Uh,” he says.

Deena clears her throat then says, “And that’s why you don’t let unknown life forms from distant planets inhabit your body, kids.”

“I’m sorry,” Eddie says. “That’s not—we only eat bad people, and not even that often!”

Deena and Dora both shake their heads. Dora says, “Eddie, don’t.” She then puts a hand on his arm and pushes him into her bedroom, closing the door behind them. “We’ll have to talk to the kids about it, so it’s best if you just don’t say anything else.”

“Alright. Yeah. Sorry.”

Venom protrudes from his shoulder. **_He’s just a little bit stupid, Skirth._ **

“So, um, just to be clear,” Dora says slowly. “You did kill those three cops?”

Eddie nods. “They were gonna kill my—my friend.”

Dora’s eyes shift back and forth, calculating. “OK. That, um. That might complicate some things. We have to be very careful.”

“Please don’t kick me out, I don’t really have anywhere else to go right—”

“No, no, don’t be silly. We won’t kick you out.” She looks him over. “But you’re safe, right? Venom is, uh, under control?”

Venom softens, drops its chin to Eddie’s shoulder. **_I would never hurt your family. In fact, I would never hurt anyone that Eddie even remotely cares about._ **

“Please, Dora, you have to believe us. You can trust me, right? Vee is mine, it’s a part of me, so if you can trust me, then you can trust it.”

“Yeah, that actually makes it kind of worse, you know? If it’s part of you, and it’s bad, then it would be influencing you. You’re not, um, fully human, Eddie. Neither am I, and I know I have to check myself every day to make sure I’m choosing my humanity. Do you understand what I mean?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do. But I also—I don’t choose my humanity, because I can’t. Venom and I are one—we’re one creature, or monster, or whatever you want to call it.” Eddie reaches up and rubs Venom’s face. “But I influence it as much as it influences me, and neither of us is fully good or bad, so there’s no chance of one of us poisoning the other.”

Dora studies him for several seconds before saying, “Alright, I trust you. I’m going to go eat dinner with my family. You can use this room, I know you have work to do.”

She leaves Eddie standing in the dim light of the bedroom. Venom nudges at his neck, sending tendrils up to his face like fingertips caressing his skin.

**_You’re getting better at understanding us._ **

_Yeah, well_ ** _,_ ** _it still scares me, but there’s no point denying it._

Limbs creep along Eddie’s collarbone, draping across his traps and up his neck in the most alien of embraces. **_If it gets to be too much of a problem for me to eat people, we can find other means of sustenance._ **

Eddie thinks about how their body currently feels: strong, satisfied. _No, it’s alright. We’ll be alright._

For the next hour or so Eddie keeps his distance from Dora’s family, which turns out to be easy because he has a ton of work to do anyway. He calls Anne and apologizes for freaking out at her that morning, then he discusses Dora’s army idea with her and is surprised at how readily she accepts it.

Feeling confident, he tries Dre next, sending him a private message without giving away too much information. After just a couple minutes, Dre calls him.

“Man, what’s this shit you on?” Dre asks as soon as Eddie picks up.

“What do you mean? I haven’t even told you anything yet,” Eddie says.

“You say you got some big ideas, but you all over the news, Eddie. You need to be laying low.”

“I can’t do that forever, I have to figure shit out. We have something here, alright?” Eddie tries his best to explain the injection idea to Dre, then he ends by saying, “Imagine if your friends could have what you have.”

Dre scoffs loudly through the line. “You know I love you, man, but this is stupid. Your scientist friend, she white?”

“Jewish?” Eddie says stupidly.

“You ain’t convincing Black kids in the Bay to sign up for a science project on some flimsy promise that it’ll help them fight the police. C’mon, dude.”

**_Hm. Maybe I should’ve picked Dre as a host, he’s smarter than you._ **

_Hey. I mean, true, but fuck you._

“Eddie?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m tracking with you,” Eddie says. “I guess I was just...I was thinking about giving you the resources you need, you know, like you said—”

“OK, yeah, I see how you might think that, but nah. Don’t worry about me, man, worry about yourself. They really tryna take you down, so be careful.”

“Alright, yeah. Well, if you, uh.” Eddie clears his throat. “I’ll call you again if I come up with any other dumb plans.”

Dre laughs and says bye. 

Eddie sets his phone down and puts his hands over his face, sighing.

 **_You might not always be successful, but you do your best. My Eddie, always trying to help everyone._ **Venom squeezes around his shoulders.

_Oh, it’s alright. I’m being selfish anyway. I only like Dora’s plan if it helps you and me._

**_Hm. Maybe._ **

Eddie grabs a tendril at his shoulder and brings it to his lips for a kiss. _I don’t know how I feel about you calling me “my Eddie.”_

**_What? That’s stupid. You’re mine, I’ll call you whatever I want._ **

_That’s not really how—_

**_What about “beloved”?_ **

_Absolutely not._

Venom probes at Eddie’s skin, annoyed. **_Anne says “honey.” And you call me all kinds of stupid shit._ **

_Alright, can we focus?_

**_You’re the one who brought it up._ **

While Eddie works on figuring out what to do with Dora’s interview, Anne continues sending him links to comments and posts on various social media platforms, all of them overwhelmingly positive about Eddie or negative about the police. He recognizes many of his homeless friends, some of Mrs. Chen’s customers, people he helped through investigations and other people he helped by eating their abusers. Nobody directly mentions the killing and eating, but it’s still difficult to reckon with the amount of bodies they’ve digested in such a short amount of time together.

**_You do tend to repress it._ **

_Well excuse me for not wanting to think of myself as a cannibal._

**_A cannibal? Is that the word for eating people?_ **

Eddie sighs. _I honestly can’t tell if you’re fucking with me when you say shit like that._

Anne texts Eddie again, with a clip of a teenager on local news talking about how the police coerced her into saying things about Eddie that she didn’t mean. Eddie realizes it’s Joanna’s daughter and immediately calls Joanna.

“So you saw Naomi on TV, then?” Joanna says.

“Hey, uh, yeah, so you didn’t try to stop her?” Eddie replies.

“Yeah, I’m not so great at that. She feels really bad about what happened. So do I.” Joanna sighs into the phone. “I knew the cops were after you, and I told my kid about you anyway.”

“No, Joanna, please. _I’m_ sorry. I’m the one who fucked up, not you. You and your kid don’t deserve to be involved in any of this, so yeah, I’m really sorry. Extremely sorry.”

“Wow, um,” Joanna says, clearly caught off guard. “You’re very sweet and it sounds like you’re really going through it, so yeah, apology accepted. But seriously, there’s nothing I can do about Naomi. Your pal Solomon and his lawyer even tried talking to her. Didn’t take.”

“It’s alright. I just don’t want her getting into any trouble. Well, any _more_ trouble. You guys have been through enough because of me,” Eddie says.

“It’s life, Eddie. Sometimes you have really great sex with a hot guy who’s in deep shit with the law, and you know what’s weird?” Joanna only pauses for a second. “The main thing I’m thinking about is how I want to have sex with him again.”

**_Women seem to really like having sex with you._ **

_That’s not true, it’s just Joanna and Anne, and I think Anne just wants to have sex with_ you.

“Maybe, um, if I sort all this out, we can, you know, go out. Or whatever,” Eddie mumbles.

Joanna giggles. “You really do make me feel like I’m in my 20s again. I’ll talk to you later, sweetheart.”

**_She said “sweetheart” like you sometimes call me sweetheart._ **

Eddie yawns and closes his laptop.

**_Hey, you think Anne wants to have sex with me?_ **

_Oh yeah, definitely._

Eddie makes his way out to the living room, ignoring Venom’s internal ramblings about the logistics of having sex with Anne. The kids are gone, but Dora and Deena are huddled together at the kitchen table talking in low tones. They both look up at Eddie like they’ve been caught.

“Eddie, I have a question for you,” Deena says. She looks at him expectantly.

“Oh, um. Yeah, go ahead,” Eddie replies, opening his arms in an inviting gesture. 

“Can I see Venom?”

**_What?_ **

_She said, “Can I see Venom?”_

**_You know that’s not what I_** _—_ **_oh, yes, I see how that’s annoying._ **

“You want to see it, like, more than what you’ve already seen?” Eddie asks, shifting from foot to foot awkwardly.

Deena blinks owlishly at Eddie. “I’d like to see what it looks like when it eats people.” 

“Yeah, um, alright.”

**_Eddie, this seems suspicious._ **

_What? Their kids were playing with you all afternoon, they’ve already seen you._

**_Yes, so why does Deena want to see me? I don’t get it._ **

_Dora trusts us, so we should trust them. That’s how relationships work._

“Eddie?” Dora asks.

“Yeah! Sorry, yeah.” He taps his temple. “Having a conversation up here. You sure you want to see it? It’s a little bit gnarly.”

Deena’s demeanor changes; she looks deadly serious. Eddie suddenly feels like a child who has done something terribly wrong and is about to pay the price. Deena says, “You’re staying in our home, a temporary home we moved to partially because of you. My wife saved your life. Show me the goddamn alien, Eddie.”

Eddie’s face is sucked away immediately, his body disappearing into Venom’s frame in a split second. Venom has to hunch its shoulders and duck its head to avoid crashing through the ceiling.

Deena jumps up from her spot right away, crossing the kitchen and living room as her eyes roam over Venom’s body. She touches it curiously, a gentle caress along its bicep.

“Fascinating,” she says. “Babe, is this what they tried to do to you?” she asks Dora while still examining Venom.

Dora stays seated at the kitchen table. “Yes. I never got to see one like this—I mean, perfectly bonded and fully realized.”

 **_Eddie and I are very strong_** , Venom says, and Deena jumps at the sound but then continues her ministrations, fingertips tracing veins of Venom’s shoulder. **_He is a perfect host._ **

“Well, not exactly,” Dora says. “You two did have a panic attack this morning.”

Venom glares at her. **_He is a perfect host._ **

_Babe, it’s alright, she doesn’t mean anything by it._

“Is that Eddie? You’re in there?” Deena asks. She puts her ear right up against Venom’s chest. “Did you just call this alien ‘babe’?”

 **_We’ve been arguing about that lately,_ ** Venom answers. **_He won’t let me call him “beloved.”_ **

Deena turns dramatically to Dora and points finger guns at her. “I told you! I fucking knew it.”

Dora pushes her glasses up her nose while rolling her eyes. “You knew it because I told you, because I described to you how Eddie was when he was dying.”

“Yeah, and somehow _you_ , little miss scientist, didn’t notice that this man was in love with this alien despite the fact that you watched him deteriorate to the point of death just because he didn’t have it anymore.”

“That would’ve happened whether he was in love with Venom or not! I’m sorry it’s not every day I think about interspecies relationships. It wasn’t exactly on my radar.”

Venom eases itself back inside Eddie while Dora and Deena continue their argument. Eddie takes a seat on the couch and scrolls through his phone.

 **_I thought they already knew,_ **Venom says in Eddie’s ear.

_Yeah, I did, too. I didn’t think we were hiding it?_

**Should _we be hiding it? We made them fight._ **

_You know, I kind of forgot that it’s weird that you and I are together._

Dora and Deena move to the kitchen sink to wash and dry dishes together, their fight focused now on Dora not being observant enough about human emotions and relationship dynamics. 

**_You were embarrassed about it just a few weeks ago. You thought it was silly to be in a relationship with me._ **

_Well, that’s wrong. I’m sorry._

**_You were adjusting._ **

“Eddie, do you want some cookies? We made some yesterday before you got here,” Deena shouts.

“Yeah, sure.” Eddie heads toward the kitchen and accepts a plate of cookies from Dora. He checks his hip against the counter and eats while using a couple tentacles to help put dishes away.

“Are you doing that or is Venom?” Dora asks as she hands a plate to a tentacle.

“Yes,” Eddie answers. _Was that really just a few weeks ago? Like, it’s only been a few weeks since we told Anne about us?_

**_It’s been a very long few weeks._ **

“You’re not getting, like, alien goop on our dishes, are you?” Deena asks.

Eddie extends a tentacle out to cup Deena’s face. Mouth full of cookie, he says, “I don’t know, am I getting goop on your face?”

Deena swats the limb away. “I literally _just_ met you.”

Venom takes over Eddie’s face. **_You were openly caressing us 10 minutes ago._ **

Dora laughs quietly as she passes by Eddie on her way out of the kitchen. Deena follows on her heels, both of them bidding Eddie and Venom a goodnight. 

Eddie snags a few more cookies and goes back to the couch, palming his stomach as he goes. _Have I put on any weight since you’ve been overfeeding me?_

**_A little. You’re still too small._ **

Eddie rolls his eyes. 

**_You have extra energy. What are you thinking?_ **

_I don’t know what to do with Dora’s interview. It needs to be out there, but I just don’t know._

Venom slithers around Eddie’s neck like a snake, settling around his shoulders comfortably. **_Can’t you just put it on the internet? Isn’t that what everyone’s been doing?_ **

_I’m a journalist, though. What I should be doing is putting together a cohesive story and then pitching it to a network, but we just don’t have that kind of time. We can’t hide here forever._

**_Your journalist friends aren’t moving fast enough._ **

_And at least one of them let the fucking story make me look like the bad guy._

Venom massages Eddie’s shoulders. **_We are a monster, Eddie. People are going to see us that way._ **

Eddie shifts, lifting a shoulder and cocking his head to the side to rub his cheek against Venom. _Yeah, well, you should’ve mentioned that before I tried to control the narrative._

**_Just put the video on the internet. I can feel it deep in your brain that that’s what you want to do._ **

_Can you really, or is that just what_ you _want me to do?_

**_I don’t know. It’s confusing in here._ **

_Yeah._

Before he can take the time to overthink it, Eddie goes ahead and publishes the interview on YouTube. Despite not posting anything new in nearly a year, he still has a significant number of subscribers. He goes to sleep immediately after.

In the morning, he wakes up to Dora gently shaking his shoulder. He actually put on a t-shirt and a pair of shorts before going to bed, but Venom is all loose limbs around him, and its mouth is drooling against the back of his neck, so ultimately it’s an embarrassing position to be found. He struggles to sit up and suck Venom back inside his body. Dora and Deena are both staring at him.

“What? What’s wrong?” he asks groggily. 

“I’m famous,” Dora replies.

“Oh god.” Eddie scrambles for his laptop.

“I’ll end the suspense for you, it had two million views as of 10 minutes ago,” Deena says. “We haven’t even had time to watch it, I just got back from taking the kids to school. You didn’t think to tell us you were posting that last night?”

“It was an impulsive decision, I’m sorry.” Eddie pulls up the video and turns his laptop toward Dora and Deena. “You wanna watch? I cut it down to an hour.”

Deena plops down on the couch next to Eddie. “Yeah, let me see my wife.”

As soon as Eddie hits play, Dora leaves the room and putters around the kitchen, returning only to hand coffee off to Deena and Eddie before she disappears. 

Onscreen, Dora sits in front of a blank background and looks off to the left, where Eddie was sitting. She speaks in a soft tone, a bit robotically.

_“The San Francisco Police Department did a sweep of the Life Foundation after Carlton Drake’s rocket exploded, but they didn’t tell the public anything they found. In fact, they barred journalists from entering the building and issued threats to keep the news from getting out…_

_“...I was patient zero. I woke up in a lab feeling hypersensitive and overstimulated in every way. I felt like I was, I don’t know, floating outside of my own body. I still feel detached sometimes, like I’m not me anymore because the equivalent of alien DNA is keeping me alive. The police department did that to me. They did it to me so that I could do it to others.”_

Deena sniffs and wipes her eyes.

 _“...They wouldn’t let me go home. They paid me and housed me in the lab where I performed experiments for them, but they wouldn’t let me see my family. My wife and two kids.”_ Onscreen Dora shakes her head, a tear running down her cheek. _“They gave injections to prisoners first. Three men—they told me they were convicted felons, but I don’t know. Even if they were, that doesn’t mean they deserved to die. I told them I wouldn’t do it, that what I was doing in the lab needed more testing, and that’s when they put a gun to my head. They never told me the names of those three prisoners, and now they’re dead. They didn’t deserve to die. They didn’t deserve…”_

Venom shifts inside Eddie’s brain. Deep in his subconscious, it says, **_We paid the debt of those three men by eating those three cops._ **

_That’s not justice though, sweetheart._

_“I don’t know how many other scientists they have working on this, but I personally administered injections to 21 uniformed officers. When left unchecked, the symbiote matter can cause rage, aggression, inhuman strength, physical abnormalities, and, um, hunger for human flesh. I saw an officer—um, Officer Jacobsen, I witnessed him open his mouth wide enough to bite a man’s head in half.”_ Dora closes her eyes and takes off her glasses so she can pinch the bridge of her nose. _“He was interrogating a man who was just waiting on bail, and he lost control. The top of his head—it was opened, blood, so much blood pouring down what was left of his face—just from the bridge of his nose down. He was just waiting on bail. And Officer Jacobsen just sat there, chewing.”_ She drops her head in her hands, her shoulders shaking.

Deena gets up from the couch and goes to their bedroom, shutting the door behind her.

Eddie turns the video off.

His phone is ringing, and apparently has been for a while, because he had it on silent and didn’t notice the calls coming in. He ignores them, until he realizes that Dre is calling him, and has called him four times in the past five minutes.

“Dre? You there?” Eddie answers.

“Shit! Fuck, Eddie. Fuck, fuck. They coming for me, man. _Fuck._ They think I got it, they think I got it.”

“Whoa, whoa, what? Who thinks you got what?”

“Your alien, man!” Dre shouts. “The cops, they think it—they think it moved from you to me. _Fuck!”_

“Dre, tell me where you are. Do not—”

“I can’t—they gonna—Eddie, please—”

A jumble of angry voices drown Dre out, then there’s jostling and rustling of the phone and finally gunshots.

The call ends.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shit gets fucked.

Eddie calls Dre over and over again. 

**_Do something else,_ ** Venom says during the fifth call. 

Dora comes out to the kitchen and asks Eddie if he’s alright; he’s not sure whether he answers her or not.

He calls Anne.

She says, “I haven’t had a chance to watch the video yet—”

“Annie, I’m sorry, you gotta help me. There’s a kid—his name’s Dre, he was just arrested. They think—the cops think—they think he’s me. He’s Venom, I mean,” Eddie says in a rush, heart hammering in his chest. “It’s Dre Kemble. I don’t know if ‘Dre’ is short for something else. Fuck.”

**_I’ve got you,_ ** Venom says calmly as it works through Eddie’s heart and lungs to even out his panic.

“I don’t understand. Why would they think—”

_ “Please,  _ Annie, can you just try to find out if he’s alright? He called me while they were...He has a bit of Venom in him, long story, but can you—”

There is a pounding on the door. Eddie abruptly hangs up the phone.

Dora and Deena both come out to the living room and look warily at Eddie as the pounding gets louder and harder.

Dora gestures some kind of signal to Deena, who then pulls out her phone and types. 

There is a loud crash, and the door flies off its hinges. Reverting to a pre-Venom survival instinct, Eddie puts his phone up and begins a live recording, streaming to YouTube. Four cops in full riot gear storm into the apartment and grab each of them, two going to Dora. 

“You can’t do this,” Eddie says as calmly as possible as all of them are dragged out of the apartment.

The cop holding Eddie tries to take his phone, but sticky strands protrude from Eddie’s fingertips and embed themselves into his phone case, inextricably attaching his phone to his hand.

“You haven’t even told us who you are,” Eddie continues, making sure the video is picking up his voice. “You busted down the door without saying anything, without showing a warrant or anything. We can’t see your faces, you’re not wearing badges.” 

Anne calls Eddie, but he quickly ignores the call so the video doesn’t shut off. Deena is yelling incoherently at the cops. Dora is being dragged by her hair through the hallway so forcefully that her glasses fall off and are trampled underfoot. People come out of their apartments to see what’s going on. More cops show up at the top of the stairs and shove people, shouting at them to go back inside.

“You’re Eddie Brock,” the cop holding Eddie says. “Guys, I’ve got Eddie Brock!”

Several hands bear down on Eddie at once, trying and failing to kick him and knock him down with batons, all while trying to take his phone. Venom works so quickly right below the surface of his skin that he doesn’t even feel any of the blows.

“You’re beating me up for no reason! I haven’t done anything! I’m not even resisting!” Eddie says loudly, phone still recording everything even as he sees a taser shooting into his chest. He looks down at it then back up at the cop. “Why are you tasing me?” 

The cops all shout over each other with their harebrained theories as to why none of their methods are working on Eddie, and what they should be trying instead. As they push everyone down the stairs, one cop elbows Deena in the face for no reason, sending her back so hard that she crashes into the wall headfirst and begins bleeding both from her nose and the back of her head. 

**_“Alright, fuck this,”_ ** Eddie and Venom say simultaneously as Venom takes over.

It fills up much of the stairwell, causing even more chaos and shouting as it sends cops toppling down the stairs. They shoot at it, and it bites their bullets between its teeth, lodging them in its gums, and then spitting them back so violently that the bullets break several cops’ face shields. Eddie is still holding his phone within Venom, but the video is off. They grab Deena and cocoon her within Venom’s body, and Eddie digs into their shared conscious to see if he can figure out a way to fix her head while Venom fights. While Eddie is concentrating harder than he’s ever concentrated on anything in his life, Venom busts through a door and flies out a window, holding Dora in its arms.

_ I don’t think I can fix her, Vee,  _ Eddie says.

**_No, you won’t be able to. She’s not a suitable host._ **

“Hey, what’s going on?” Dora shouts. “Where’s Dee?”

**_“Inside of us,”_ ** Eddie and Venom say.  **_“She needs to get to a hospital.”_ **

They don’t even bother trying to hide, even though it’s bright and sunny out with plenty of cars on the road. They hear sirens in the distance, growing closer, so Venom straps Dora to its back, using its threads like a seatbelt, and lunges on all fours across the tops of buildings.

“I don’t really like this!” Dora says.

**_“We don’t have any more room in here, we’re sorry.”_ **

When they get to the hospital, Venom recedes back into Eddie, places Dora gently on her feet, and keeps an unconscious Deena in Eddie’s arms. The sirens loom.

“Let me take her,” Dora says, and then she doesn’t wait before scooping her wife easily out of Eddie’s grasp. “You guys stay out of sight and fend off any cops, please.”

“Good idea,” Eddie replies. “Hey, what about your kids? Should we—”

“No, I’ve got it. We had a contingency plan for this kind of thing. Deena sent an alert to her parents as soon as the cops came in.”

“Wow. Alright, uh, we’ll be here. Can you see?”

“Not really. I’ll be OK.”

Eddie feels like there are eyes on him even though he’s pretty sure all the passersby who saw Venom did not also see him. He’s still in his pajamas, but he supposes a t-shirt and gym shorts aren’t too out of the ordinary for people to question it. He walks around a bit, trying not to look suspicious, until he gets around to the back of the hospital and is able to climb to the top with Venom’s help. Venom protrudes just a tiny bit from his shoulder to keep a lookout while Eddie checks his phone.

Both of his videos are blowing up. Activists have caught wind of the situation and are planning protests. Local politicians are addressing it. Commenters are panicking about the way Eddie cut the video off, right as Deena’s head was smashed.

He calls Anne.

“Eddie, what the fuck is—”

“I still need you to find that kid. I’m sorry, I really need to know he’s alright. We’re OK here, mostly. Find Dre, please.”

“Yeah, I can do that—or, I’ll do what I can. Eddie, what’s going on?”

“Lotta bullshit.” 

**_Eddie. Cops._ **

“Fuck, I have to go, Anne. Cops after us.” As Eddie sees the police cruisers pulling up to the hospital, he impulsively says, “I love you, bye.”

“Oh, uh, love you, t—”

Venom takes over again. It scales down the side of the hospital and hangs upside down directly above the cops.

**_“Why are you harassing Dora Skirth?”_ **

The cops shoot at Venom. It fans out into a sticky wall, catching all the bullets to protect anybody that could be coming in and out of the hospital’s entrance.

**_“Stop shooting at us,”_ ** Eddie-Venom says reasonably.  **_“You didn’t read Skirth any of her rights. You threw her wife into a wall. You’re shooting at us and we’re not even doing anything.”_ **

One of the cops raises his hand to get the shooting to stop. He then yells, “Eddie Brock, put the symbiote away. You’re under arrest.”

**_“I don’t know an Eddie Brock.”_ **

_ He said “symbiote,”  _ Eddie thinks.  _ They know things. _

“Eddie Brock,” the cop repeats, annoyed. “We know you are in there. You’re under arrest.”

**_“Why are you so obsessed with this Eddie Brock guy? Is he hot or something?”_ **

The cop turns and gives a signal to the other cops. A noise begins to play.

_ Ah, fuck. _

Eddie uses every bit of willpower to keep himself hidden inside Venom even as Venom vibrates in and out of material existence. 

_ My ears can take it, sweetheart. Use my ears. C’mon, baby, stay with me. _

Eddie takes as much control of Venom’s body as he can, forcing his limbs and skin to extend into Venom’s biomass to keep it steady. His head feels like it’s about to explode from the strain, but he is able to fully take over everything except Venom’s tongue, which lolls around uselessly, spraying slobber everywhere.

It hurts like hell, and Eddie will need a very serious nap, but he runs their combined bodies far enough away from the cops to then collapse at the bottom of an empty loading dock behind a warehouse, all of his muscles giving up as Venom sucks back inside him. He curls in on himself and says, “Ow.”

**_Eddie, that was so good. You saved us. My good, strong Eddie, I wish I could heal you but I can’t move._ **

“Do you think they’ll follow us instead of going after Skirth?”

**_We have to be more of a threat to them than she is, right? You’re the one who posted the videos._ **

_ Yeah. I don’t hear anything yet though. _

**_We’re a bit damaged, I don’t think our hearing is going to work as well as usual until we recover. I don’t think anything is working._ **

Eddie tries to get his phone out of his pocket to call Dora, but when he lifts his arm it just falls uselessly back to his side. He closes his eyes and sighs.

“Fuck. Ow,” he says.

His phone rings.

“God fucking damn it.”

Using every bit of energy they can muster, they both move a tendril into Eddie’s pocket and accept the call, then turn it on speakerphone. The action leaves Eddie breathless, but he manages a weak, “Hello?”

“Eddie? You there?” Dora asks from inside his pocket.

“Yeah, mostly,” he says. “You guys alright?”

“I think so. Deena has a concussion and a broken nose, but she woke up a minute ago and is pissed. Um, was that you causing the commotion outside?”

“Yeah. We’re not there anymore, so have you seen any cops?”

“Are you sure you’re OK? You sound like you can barely talk.”

Eddie tries to even out his breathing but ends up choking on a ragged breath before he can answer. “Uh, in recovery. Vee and I just need a little rest. Cops?”

“None so far. I keep hearing things outside the room, though. I think they’re putting the whole hospital on some kind of lockdown.”

“Alright, well, if you can find a way to get out of there, you should do that. I’m sorry I can’t help.”

“We’ll be OK. Keep yourself safe, Eddie.”

“Thanks. Bye, Skirth.”

**_What do we do now?_ **

_ Die, I guess. _

Above them, the loading dock door slides open. Eddie tries to roll against the wall to hide himself beneath the overhang, but a gruff voice calls to him before he can manage it. 

“Hey! Who the fuck are you?” the man yells.

“Nobody, sorry. I’m hurt,” Eddie replies weakly. 

“Truck’s coming in. You’ve gotta move, buddy.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, just let it run me over.”

Venom painstakingly extends a couple limbs out of Eddie’s back and sticks them to the wall, dragging Eddie lethargically up against the concrete and out of the way of the truck. After the 18-wheeler is done parking, two guys get out of it and immediately spot Eddie stuck to the wall. One of them jogs over to him to see what’s going on. Venom releases Eddie, plopping him onto the ground in the small space between the wheels and the wall. 

The guy tries to ask Eddie how the hell he was attached to the wall, but Eddie brushes him off and asks if he has any water. And chocolate. Amazingly, he has both in the truck. 

With food in their system, Eddie and Venom are able to walk away from the loading dock and out toward the highway. They have to take breaks often, but it ends up being to their advantage because while they’re sitting in a patch of grass they see a group of police cars speeding down the road.

“Oh, alright, bye,” Eddie says sarcastically as they pass. “Babe, how we doing? We don’t have to eat somebody, do we?”

**_No, we don’t have the strength to even accomplish that anyway._ **

“So, what now? I need to—we have to go back home and make sure Dre’s alright. That’s five hours at least, how the fuck are we supposed to do that?”

**_Sleep. We have to find somewhere to sleep for a couple hours._ **

_ Goddamn it. _

Eddie thinks with the stress he feels about Dre that he won’t be able to sleep, but once he’s curled up at the base of a tree just off the side of the highway, he falls asleep the second he shuts his eyes.

Two or so hours later, they feel recovered enough to run back to San Francisco, albeit slower than their trip the other night. They don’t even bother trying to stay out of sight.

Anne calls when they still have about three hours left in their run, so they stop in some woods and perch in a tree to answer.

**_“Hey, Annie.”_ **

“Venom? What’s going on?” Anne asks.

**_“It’s both of us talking. We’re trying to get back to San Francisco now.”_ **

“Oh, good. Your buddy Dre is being held downtown.”

**_“They took him alive? Thank fuck,”_ ** Eddie-Venom says.

“Oh Jesus, I didn’t realize—you thought he was dead?”

**_“We were just worried. So what’s going on?”_ **

“Well, local news is already saying that Venom moved from you to Dre, but they also seem to think symbiotes are some kind of transmissible virus, and some stations are claiming that the police force became infected when they arrested  _ you.  _ They keep airing parts of Dr. Skirth’s interview, I’m assuming out of context.”

**_“Christ, already? I thought we’d have a little bit of time at least.”_ ** Venom moves the phone from one ear to the other, momentarily letting go of their hold on the tree they’re hanging from and making Eddie’s stomach drop.

“Well, the internet’s out of control,” Anne reasons. “People are already starting to protest, like, in the streets. I’ve been hearing demands for the mayor to address the situation.”

**_“Oh no, not the mayor,”_ ** Eddie-Venom jokes.  **_“We’ll be back soon.”_ **

While they continue running, Venom asks Eddie what his plan is. Eddie tells it he hasn’t really thought through anything past “get to Dre, don’t let anybody know you have Venom.”

_ You have to be the one showing your face in the police precinct. You know, like how Batman and Bruce Wayne have never been seen in the same room together. _

Eddie can feel Venom digging through his memories to understand the reference. It then says,  **_They’ll see that Dre isn’t me, but what about you?_ **

_ They can’t see me. At all. We’ll let them make whatever assumptions they want about who’s inside you. _

**_I can change our body, give us boobs or something so they don’t suspect you._ **

_ Hmm, interesting. Can we do, like, a bunch of tentacles so you don’t even look remotely human? _

**_Yeah, fun idea._ **

They arrive in San Francisco as the sun is setting. Eddie drops into Mrs. Chen’s store and must look bad enough for her not to be too mad at him for being there. She lets him hide in her office/supply closet and eat his literal weight in chocolate, with Venom taking so much energy from it that Eddie doesn’t even feel full. Chen doesn’t even ask when he emerges looking way better. 

Venom takes back over outside, trying to be stealthy on their way to the police precinct, but it doesn’t even matter once they get near it. 

There are hundreds, maybe a couple thousand, people crowding the streets, chanting and playing music and waving signs. Venom perches at the top of a building and looks down on the crowd for about five seconds before a couple people point up at it and shout.

“Alien! That’s the fucking alien!” the loudest voice shouts.

**_Eddie. What do we do._ **

People cheer and wave up at them, then a chant of “Ven-om, Ven-om” starts, and Eddie can’t help himself.

**_“How do you know our name?”_ ** Eddie-Venom shouts down at the protesters.

They cheer louder. Several people angle their signs so Eddie can read them. There are a lot of quotes from Dora's interview. But mostly, they have Dre’s name or likeness on them. 

_ Oh. They’re here for Dre.  _

Eddie sends mental images to Venom, various inhuman-looking monsters that he thinks they might be able to imitate.  _ It’s time. _

It’s a weird shift, like what he imagines pushing his whole body through a vat of jello might feel like, but when it’s over there are seven grotesque tentacles protruding out of an arachnid-shaped body, with Venom’s head dramatically elongated to look like a little green man-style alien. It moves by sliding all the tentacles across the ground in a gentle rhythm like a centipede. 

**_This is fun,_ ** Venom says so only Eddie can hear.  **_I love doing weird things with our bodies._ **

_ I know, sweetheart. You’re cute. _

Venom crawls right into the police precinct through a window, then it pulls itself up and uses three tentacles to walk and four as horrifying arms. Everything is thrown into chaos right away as Eddie-Venom yells,  **_“Where is Dre Kemble?”_ ** over the commotion. 

Some officers fire at Venom, which of course does nothing, but others are smarter and reach for their computers presumably to play the dreaded noise. Venom extends its four arms and smashes every single computer in sight. 

**_“WHERE IS DRE KEMBLE?”_ ** they repeat, booming their voice so loud that the place is momentarily rendered silent. 

Out of the back comes three officers that clearly have the symbiote injections, and as they approach Venom they unhinge their jaws and reveal giant mouths with rows of jagged teeth. 

**_“No, no, fuck off,”_ ** Eddie-Venom says, a bit bitchy, as they merge two of their tentacles together into one massive limb that they use to squeeze around the three cops and toss them around like rag dolls. 

The cops are strong and bite into Venom’s matter, and it hurts like hell, but Eddie and Venom are stronger and extremely pissed off, so they keep throwing them into walls and the ceiling until all three of them are unconscious, then they toss them into a room and shut the door behind them. Venom hasn’t actually moved from its spot by the front entrance, just capable of causing chaos with its limbs alone. 

Eddie takes control of a couple tentacles and surreptitiously opens the door to lockup, then points toward the stairs so the guys can escape without being noticed. 

A couple cops come out of the elevator carrying massive blowtorches, which Venom spots right away and steals out of their hands and knocks them both over the head with them. They are replaced by more cops with more blowtorches, so Venom changes tack and steps into the middle of the precinct and balloons itself up to an enormous muscled beast, shoving people and desks aside with its mass.

**_“I’m going to eat every single one of you if you don’t tell me where Dre Kemble is.”_ **

It’s an empty threat—they would die if they ate everybody—but at least one guy believes it and speaks up.

“Dre isn’t here!” he frantically shouts. “He disappeared as soon as  _ you _ showed up.”

“Yeah!” another guy chimes in. “Almost like you’re him. We know you’re in there, Kemble.”

**_“Oh for fuck’s sake.”_ **

Venom turns back into a smaller tentacle monster and slithers right out of the precinct, scaling the side of the building and ignoring the protesters’ shouts at it while it disappears down the street. Halfway to Anne’s, it turns back into its regular human-shaped form and jumps easily over buildings.

_ Hope Anne’s home. _

**_Where do you think Dre is?_ **

_ I don’t know. We gotta call him. _

**_Did you let the prisoners out?_ **

_ They weren’t prisoners. Being held in lockup is some bullshit. _

Venom laughs.  **_Are we the bad guys?_ **

_ No,  _ Eddie answers quickly.  _ But I don’t think we’re the good guys either. Like, I don’t think the Avengers are calling us anytime soon. _

Venom spits Eddie out one block away from Anne’s so that if cops are parked near her place then they won’t see both of them. The street seems completely empty and quiet, but Eddie still tries to go unnoticed until he knocks on Anne’s door.

Dan opens it. A smile splits his face. He puts an arm on Eddie’s shoulder and leads him inside as he says, “Holy shit, you’re alive.”

“Yeah, hey, Dan,” Eddie says shyly. “Sorry to just show up like this. Annie here?”

“No, she’s working.” He leads Eddie to the kitchen while he talks. “I didn’t expect to see you back here so soon, buddy. Can I get you anything, or can I help with anything?” 

Eddie looks around the kitchen, feeling a little lost. “No, um, I need to—I have to make some calls. Sorry.”

“You’re fine, do whatever you need to do. I’m here if you need anything.”

Eddie excuses himself to the guest bedroom and dials Dre’s number on his way.

While it rings, Venom says,  **_Dan desperately wants to be helpful._ **

_ Oh, you think that’s what it is? I feel like he always wears kid gloves around me ever since the lobster— _

“Eddie,” Dre says between labored breaths.

“Dre! Oh my god, where are you? Are you alive?” Eddie responds.

“Yeah, I’m. I’m alive. I just—I been—been running. Can’t—catch—my—breath.”

“Where are you? Why are you running?”

Dre doesn’t answer at first, just breathes heavily into the phone, and Eddie can hear sirens get closer and then farther away. There’s some shuffling, and then it’s quiet. 

“Dre?” Eddie asks after a minute.

“Yeah. I stopped. Better now.” He chokes out a laugh. “I climbed up a building. Shit.”

“How’d you get away?”

“From what I heard, a giant fucking alien caused a distraction,” he says sarcastically. “I was in the back, bruh. They locked me alone in a room with that dumb frequency tone thing, so I just got out and started running.”

Eddie paces around the guest room, Venom thrumming with energy below the surface of his skin. Mr. Belvedere trots in and rubs up against his leg. “Wait, the sound doesn’t work on you?”

“Nah, man. What it s‘posed to do? They clearly thought it’d do something.”

“I mean, if I was stuck in a room with it and couldn’t get out, Vee and I would eventually die.”

_ “What?”  _ Dre exclaims. “Ah fuck, man, no wonder they was playing it.”

“Dre, where are you? We need to meet up to show the cops that you’re not Venom.”

“Oh yeah, like how Superman and Clark Kent never been seen in the same room together?”

**_Batman and Bruce Wayne,_ ** Venom replies into the phone.

“Yes, like that,” Eddie says over Venom. 

“Alright, cool. I’m in Oakland.” He coughs. “I swam, dude.”

“Jesus. Alright, uh, we’ll be there soon.”

Eddie looks down at himself after he hangs up, then he looks around the room for some clothes and finds nothing. He thought for sure he left some stuff here.

“Hey, Dan?” he calls.

Dan appears in the doorway immediately. “Yeah, bud?”

“Where are my clothes?”

“Oh shoot, I don’t know. Maybe in the laundry. You can borrow some of mine?”

Eddie looks Dan up and down and raises an eyebrow at him.

Dan laughs. “You can just cuff the jeans at the bottom, it’ll be fine.”

**_I could make you taller?_ **

_ Absolutely not. _

Rolling up Dan’s jeans actually works OK, and their waist size is similar enough to go without a belt. Eddie is tempted to ask Dan if he has a bathing suit, but then he would have to explain a lot that he doesn’t feel like explaining. Lucky for him, Dan doesn’t ask any questions before Eddie leaves. 

It only takes about 15 minutes to find Dre. He’s lying on his side on a roof, shivering in a soaking wet hoodie and jeans, but sound asleep. Venom scoops him up carefully and holds him against its chest, turning its arms into a blanket. 

_ Can you dry him off?  _ Eddie asks.

**_I don’t know how to do that._ ** Venom drops its cheek to Dre’s head and nuzzles him.  **_But doesn’t this help humans warm up?_ **

_ Here, just let him come inside here and I can give him my body heat. _

**_But you’re wet, too._ **

_ Yeah, and I’m fucking cold, too, so let him in here. _

Eddie realizes he doesn’t have to wait for Venom; he just grabs Dre himself and pushes him inside their body and then separates his arms from Venom’s so that he can hug Dre and rub his hands up and down his back to generate heat. 

Dre startles awake but then relaxes, dropping his head to Eddie’s chest as he mumbles, “We inside Venom?”

“Yeah. I’m just trying to warm you up. You’re freezing.”

“Thanks, homie.” He wraps his arms around Eddie’s waist. “Venom’s, like, all over us.”

**_Yeah, I don’t have a lot of space in here._ ** Venom’s whole body shifts, pulling its threads against both Eddie and Dre’s skin. **_Eddie, I can’t really do anything without your body’s help. I’m just a ball right now._ **

Dre abruptly lifts his head up. “Oh! You ever seen  _ Pacific Rim?”  _

Eddie thinks about it for a second then says, “Oh no, I don’t think that’s gonna wor—”

**_It will work,_ ** Venom interrupts. It pulls at Eddie and Dre’s bodies, separating them inside its frame. 

Eddie controls the right, Dre the left.

**_Interesting,_ ** Venom says.  **_I am in both of your brains._ **

_ Holy shit, this fucks,  _ Dre says in their shared consciousness. He extends his left arm out and spreads his fingers; Venom’s left hand splits into five large tentacles, each controlled by Dre’s individual fingers.  _ We can do anything.  _

Eddie looks at the tentacles through Venom’s eyes.  _ Huh,  _ he says, impressed. 

Sirens sound in the distance. All three of them have the same thought. Venom shoves Dre out of itself completely then grabs him so they can jump down to the ground. Cars careen out of the way, horns blaring, people shouting and screaming as Venom runs through the street on all fours, Dre strapped to its back.

When the police arrive, Venom flattens its back against a storefront and holds Dre up in its hand, presenting him for everyone to see. 

The cops don’t hesitate. As soon as they get out of their cars, they start shooting, but not at Venom. At Dre.

Venom immediately subsumes Dre, protecting him from the onslaught of bullets, and yells loud enough to shake the ground,  **_“ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?”_ **

In a fit of rage, Venom swipes a tentacle out and grabs all six of the cops at once, holding them up 10 feet above the street and shaking them angrily.

_ Don’t eat them, sweetheart,  _ Eddie says calmly.  _ Whatever you do, don’t eat them. _

Dre echoes the sentiment. 

In a deadly tone, Venom says to the cops,  **_“I am going to let you go. And you are going to get in your cars and you are going to leave.”_ ** It draws its tentacle close to its face so it can glare at every officer individually.  **_“The next time, I will not be so kind.”_ **

It takes all their guns, tasers, handcuffs, batons, and smashes their sirens before letting them go. Stunned into silence, the officers look at each other and then look at Venom, deciding what to do. 

Booming its voice once again, Venom says,  **_“GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE.”_ **

The cops scramble to leave. 

Several people are out of their cars or standing on the sidewalk, holding their phones up recording everything, looking as stunned and scared as the cops. Venom turns in a slow circle, deliberately looking into every camera it sees.

**_“I am Venom,”_ ** it says.  **_“Do not fuck with me.”_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have accidentally fallen in love with Dre and feel a deep seated protectiveness for him, so it was very tempting to have Eddie and Venom save him but we ain't doing that white savior shit, so instead I had them gently cradle him okay it was a compromise


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie and Venom check out the protest downtown. Dre comes up with a theory about the way Venom works, and Eddie and Anne test it out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've put a warning in the end notes for a weird (non-kink) thing that happens during a sex scene in this chapter.

With phones still recording, Venom eases Dre out of its body and gestures between them.

 **_“Dre Kemble is not me. I am not Dre Kemble,”_ ** Eddie-Venom says. **_“See, he’s right here. And I am next to him.”_ **

Dre shouts, “Yeah, see, I ain’t even know this dude.” He then takes off at a sprint and disappears down the street.

 _Alright, time to go,_ Eddie says.

People in the crowd begin talking over each other and bravely shouting questions at Venom, but Venom runs away and jumps into the water.

Back at Anne’s, Eddie strips out of Dan’s soaking wet clothes and wraps himself in blanket-Venom while he calls Dora.

She tells him they’re staying at her in-laws’ house in Glendale and that Deena is threatening to buy a new nose. She also says she ordered a new pair of glasses online and will just have to live in a blurry world for at least five days.

Eddie texts Dre to make sure he’s OK, and Dre quickly responds that he has a friend to crash with in Oakland.

Anne gets home. From where he’s lying with blanket-Venom on the bed Eddie can hear her and Dan moving about in the kitchen and talking in low tones. 

**_Eddie. Something’s wrong,_ **Venom says.

_Yeah, I feel it, too._

Eddie gets up, keeping Venom wrapped around himself so he can retrieve some clothes from the laundry room. He hears the unmistakable sound of helicopters flying low outside.

“Fuck,” he says under his breath as he quickly pulls clothes on. 

“Eddie?” Anne calls before she and Dan both appear in the hallway. “What the fuck did you guys do?”

“Uh.” Eddie clears his throat and pulls a plain black t-shirt over his head. “You know, just, like, threatened the police a bunch of times. Let’s see, uh, LAPD, SFPD, cops in Oakland—I don’t know if they were SFPD or…”

Anne’s phone rings, followed immediately by Eddie’s phone ringing. Eddie ignores his, but Anne takes her call and walks off. A voice speaks over a radio microphone outside, saying something about an alien and a lockdown of the city.

Dan scrolls through his phone and says, “Um, Captain America is on CNN.”

“What?” Eddie asks.

Dan holds up his phone and shows a clip of Steve Rogers wearing plain clothes and calmly stating, _“We’re deciding if we need to intervene, but we’re waiting on more information about the San Francisco Police Department. The Avengers typically remove alien threats, but in this case we believe the police force may be the threat here, not the alien.”_

“Well, I’ll be damned, Cap,” Eddie says smugly. “He’s gonna get crucified for that, but good for him.”

From the living room, Anne says, “Eddie, you and Vee need to get downtown. The police are tear gassing protesters and arresting them for being out past the curfew they installed five minutes ago.”

 **_No, they’re baiting us,_ **Venom says, its head protruding from Eddie’s shoulder.

“Well obviously, baby, but we can’t just let all those people get hurt.”

Eddie’s phone buzzes with several texts at once, all from Joanna. 

_Why aren’t you answering your phone??_

_Are you alright?_

_Naomi and I are at the protest._

_You should come down here, for real._

Eddie considers texting her back but remembers that she’s never actually seen Venom’s full form before, and he isn’t sure whether he will be able to show up at the protest in his own body or inside of Venom’s. He texts Dre instead and lets him know that they’re headed downtown and that he should join them.

“What are you gonna do, Eddie?” Anne asks as both she and Dan follow him to the door. 

“Uh, not sure yet.” He struggles to pull his leather jacket on, shaking the sleeves out. “But the show the police are putting on is definitely about me and Vee, so any attention from the cops we can take away from the protesters is probably good.”

“What if they—what happens if they catch you? What then?” Anne's voice breaks on the last word. 

Eddie pulls her close to him, holding the back of her head and squeezing her tight. Dan just stands near them, giving them both a sad smile. 

“I’ll call if I need help, alright?” Eddie says sweetly. He pulls away from Anne and kisses her on the forehead. “You guys just stay here and keep an eye on the news.”

Venom curls a tentacle around Anne’s neck and caresses her cheek. It then pulls her forward and brings hers and Eddie’s mouths together to kiss. 

Eddie makes a surprised noise and laughs into the kiss. They break apart after just a few seconds. 

“Sorry,” he says to both Anne and Dan.

They wave him off and assure him it’s fine. Dan hugs him, too.

There are several helicopters hovering over the city. It’s loud, even on Anne’s mostly empty street. Eddie can hear people shouting and chanting and moving, cars honking, sirens blaring. The city feels alive in a way he hasn’t felt in a few years, and the last time it felt this way, he was working, reporting, documenting.

 **_Did we cause all this?_ **Venom asks as they walk down the street, people and noise all around. 

_No, people protest for all kinds of things,_ Eddie replies, distracted. _I think we’re just, like, an added bonus in this situation, not the center of it._

A group of white college girls run up to Eddie, one of them stroking his forearm while another presses a sticker to his shirt. A third rubs his shaved head. They reek of weed.

The girl touching his forearm says, “Eddie Brock, my god.” She peers up at him with a glint in her eyes. “You are old, but I’d still fuck you.” 

“Oh, thank you, sweetheart.” He awkwardly maneuvers his arms away from her. “You girls get home safe, alright?”

They press another sticker to him as they continue down the street.

**_I told you women want to fuck you._ **

Eddie looks down at the stickers on his shirt; they’re both rainbows with the phrase “ASK ME ABOUT MY GENDER” written on them. He leaves them on.

 **_You called that girl “sweetheart,”_ ** Venom continues. **_You use it when you’re being patronizing._ **

_No, I use it when I’m trying to placate someone._

As they walk toward more crowded areas, more and more people recognize Eddie—some from his show and others from his YouTube video—and he is touched and prodded and hugged and kissed and given stickers and beaded necklaces and glitter on his face. He used to get some attention when he had his show, but nothing quite to this extent. Before, he felt anxious whenever anyone approached him and asked for a picture or tried to shake his hand or hug him. There was a certain level of dread to seeing the knowing look in a stranger's eye, the impending awkward conversation he could never stop from occurring. Now, though, he feels perfectly settled. 

**_Everyone is so friendly,_** Venom says after an old, dark-skinned man with long dreadlocks wordlessly grabs Eddie's face and kisses him on the cheek before continuing down the street past him.

_Yeah, you know this isn't, like, normal levels of physical contact, though, right? It's a little extreme._

**_You're not reacting negatively to it though. Your heartrate isn't even elevated._ **

Eddie pulls a tendril out of the skin of his hand and rubs it between the pads of his fingers. _'Cause I know my body's safe with you. Not so worried about strangers touching me._

**_Aww. You love me._ **

_Yeah._

When they finally reach downtown, they turn a corner into all-out mayhem.

The first thing they see is a line of cops in tactical gear shoving people back with shields, pushing them forcefully to the ground and tossing canisters of tear gas at them. Helicopters fly low overhead, making unintelligible announcements and shining lights down on everyone. Protesters are screaming and running, chanting and fighting, doing everything they can to hold their ground. 

Eddie runs, texting both Joanna and Dre as he goes. He gets to the side of an office building, away from the crowd, and Venom takes over.

Venom moves so quickly that it’s able to scale the side of a high-rise and leap directly onto one of the helicopters before anyone has even spotted it. It hangs upside down from the landing skid and shouts as loudly as possible, **_“ARE YOU COCKSUCKERS LOOKING FOR ME?”_ **

Within just a few seconds, the harmful frequency rings loud and clear and Venom falls and falls and falls.

Eddie catches them in time, fanning Venom out in a gooey mess so they don’t slam into the ground and harm the protesters. Several people scream and run when they realize that an alien has splatted on top of them, but others run toward Venom in an attempt to help. Eddie scrambles to hold Venom together as cops close in on them, but out of nowhere Dre drops down directly in front of Eddie-Venom and reaches a tentacled hand into its biomass and pulls himself inside. 

_God fucking shit, that noise,_ Dre says even as he easily controls Venom’s left side, swiping at cops and tossing their guns away and clearing a path.

 _Yeah, I told you,_ Eddie replies, taking control of the right.

Venom is incoherent, but Eddie and Dre together are strong enough to run through the crowd and figure out that the source of the noise is one of the helicopters, so they sling a tentacle out as far as it will go and root around inside the cockpit until the noise stops, then they gently bring the helicopter to the ground so it doesn’t crash into anyone. 

With all three of them working, they are able to take down the other helicopters simultaneously. Venom embeds itself fully into both their bodies and is able to bulk up to twice its normal size, causing the crowd to cheer and yell, gather around it and run away from it. Nobody seems to know how to react.

They take as many shields and guns and tear gas canisters from the cops as they can manage, all while building themselves up into a wall that the protesters take shelter behind. Two eager protesters run up to Venom from the front and wave at it.

When Eddie spots them through Venom’s eyes, he blurts out, **_“Joanna!”_ **

“Holy fuck,” Naomi says, looking Venom up and down.

“Eddie? Is that you?” Joanna whisper-shouts.

A cop begins talking over a loudspeaker, “Symbiote, reveal the human controlling you immediately.”

**_“Bitch, make me.”_ **

_Eddie, just sneak out the back,_ Dre says in their shared consciousness.

 _I can’t be separated from it,_ Eddie says at the same time Venom says, **_No, I won’t let Eddie go._ **

_Take some with you!_ Dre says, annoyed. _Like I got. You keep a bit, I keep the rest, you be alright ‘til we can switch back. Promise._

The cops continue demanding that Venom retreat, despite the fact that it has taken most of their weapons and landed their helicopters. Joanna and Naomi take liberties poking and prodding at Venom, much like Eddie’s fans did to him on the street earlier. All of a sudden something knocks Venom in the forehead then falls to the ground, and they all look down just in time to see tear gas billow out right in front of Joanna and Naomi. 

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Naomi chants while burying her eyes in the crook of her elbow. 

Joanna groans loudly, presses her fingers to her eyes and runs into Venom like a child seeking a parent for help. Eddie reaches a giant hand out and scoops her up, then on impulse he sticks Venom's tongue out and licks her eyes.

"Oh gross, gross, ah," Joanna says, swatting at the tongue. She then abruptly stops freaking out and blinks her eyes open. "Wait, that worked. Get Naomi!"

The spectacle draws attention, so Joanna and Naomi help other tear gas victims make it over to Venom, and they spend the next few minutes licking people's eyes.

 _Man, this the weirdest shit,_ Dre says. Then, _Eddie, SWAT team incoming. You got to go._

_I can't—_

_Trust me, it’ll work,_ Dre interrupts.

_How do you know?_

_I don’t know, I can feel it. Intuition, I guess. Go back to Anne’s, I see her place in Vee’s head. I meet you there later._

**_I think he’s actually right, Eddie._ **

Before Eddie can even come up with an argument, he feels tendrils burrowing so deep inside him that it feels like a shift in his entire body, like his center of gravity has been changed. And then he is being pushed out of his symbiote and is standing on the street with a thinning crowd, looking up at Venom, feeling a little lost and a little out-of-body. Literally. He squeezes his left hand into a fist just to feel the ring on his index finger, the part of Venom that's permanently affixed to his skin, the symbol of their relationship. Venom reaches a hand down to his face, stroking his cheek and smiling at him with all its teeth before turning toward the approaching SWAT team. 

Eddie makes sure to show himself to the police. 

One of the cops recognizes him and charges at him, but Venom just gently places a hand on the cop’s chest and says in Dre’s cadence, **_“Nah, dude. Back off.”_ **

“Eddie!” Joanna says as she and Naomi duck under Venom’s arm and run up to him, their eyes red-rimmed. “I thought you were…”

Eddie puts a finger to his lips. To the cops, he shouts, “You guys can see that I’m not inside this alien, right? Good. See you later.”

He doesn’t bother trying to record anything on his phone; there are tons of people recording everything happening. He’s sure there will be video of Dre going inside Venom and Eddie coming out, but he hopes they did the process fast enough for nobody to piece it together.

As Eddie runs down the street with Joanna and Naomi, he looks at Venom one last time and mouths, _I love you._

 **_“I LOVE YOU, TOO,”_** Venom yells in the volume that shakes the ground. 

Several people turn and give Eddie curious looks, but he just smiles sweetly back at Venom.

**_“MY EDDIE.”_ **

“Um, Eddie, who did you leave in there? A girlfriend?” Joanna asks, awkward, while the three of them keep running away from downtown.

“What? No, it’s not the person that’s— _Vee_ loves me. We’re kind of, um, married I guess,” Eddie says. He can feel the parts of Venom left inside him, even some of their shared consciousness, and it makes him feel strong and safe. He rubs his thumb across his ring. 

Naomi laughs. “Mom, what if you married an alien?”

“Well, honey, I can’t marry the alien if the alien is already married to someone else,” Joanna responds.

Eddie laughs and thinks, _Remember when I thought I couldn’t include you in relationships with other people because it would be too weird?_

The silence in his own head answers him. He frowns.

“You OK, Eddie?” Joanna asks.

“Yeah! Yeah. Fine.” They’re still running. He’s winded. “Just sad that I don’t have Vee with me, but it’ll be alright.”

Joanna and Naomi give him a mixed reaction of amusement and pity. 

They reach a less populated street and all come to a stop to catch their breath. Eddie struggles the most to recover, because he’s pretty wiped from controlling Venom, and because he hasn’t actually exercised a single time since he’s been with Venom.

“Do you need a place to crash, Eddie?” Joanna asks.

“No, I can’t. Gotta get back to my—to a friend’s place. I have to be there when Vee gets back.”

“You guys seriously are married.”

“Mom, don’t make fun of him. He just lost his husband,” Naomi teases.

Eddie pouts at her. “Venom’s genderless.”

Naomi throws her head back and laughs. “Of course, I’m sorry, your _spouse.”_

“Excuse her, Eddie. We’re going.” Joanna tugs Naomi by the hand, then changes course and gives Eddie a quick kiss on the cheek. “Bye, sweetheart. Stay in touch and let me know when you get your monster back. And thank you, you know, for the...” She sticks her tongue out and moves it around in a silly imitation of the way Venom's tongue moves. 

Eddie laughs. “I'll call you later. Stay safe.” He watches them leave, then pulls out his phone as he walks in the direction of Anne’s street. 

It’s too long of a walk without Venom, so Eddie takes an Uber and has to deal with the driver giving a play-by-play of all the shit he’s seen while shuttling people to and from downtown. Eddie feels lightheaded when he gets to Anne’s, like there’s too much empty space and not enough activity happening in his brain.

“Uh-oh, something’s different,” Anne says as soon as she opens the door. “What happened? You look off.”

“Yeah, uh, I don’t have Vee with me.” Eddie shrugs. “They should be here soon.”

“Oh no, what can we do? How do you—what are you supposed to do to survive until it gets back?”

Eddie takes a seat in the kitchen, but Anne goes to the fridge and looks inside it. 

“I’m fine, Annie, I don’t need anything.” Eddie scratches the back of his head. “Dre figured out that we can transfer parts of Vee to each other, so he has it now. I don’t think I can be separated from it for very long, but I don’t think I’m gonna die like last time. Where’s Dan?”

“Asleep. It’s two in the morning.” She closes the fridge but remains standing across from Eddie, her hands resting on the counter. “I don’t understand. You were dead set on never being separated again. What happened?”

Eddie gives her a picture of what’s going on downtown, then he says, “Dre changed things. He understands Venom in a way that I just...I don’t know, I trust him. He’ll be here soon, you’ll see.”

The cat jumps up on the counter; Anne pets him, her eyes still trained on Eddie. “OK. You’re unusually calm, so I’m gonna believe you.”

Anne puts on a pot of tea and doesn’t ask Eddie if he wants any before setting two mugs out. Eddie clicks around online on his phone and finds video after video of the protest, several of which have Venom in them. He finds himself in one, then Dre in another, then video of Venom threatening the cops in Oakland. There are too many comments to keep track, people all over YouTube, Twitter and Dre’s forums speculating Venom’s biology and concluding that the police must be wrong and the symbiote doesn’t actually need a human host.

There is also footage of Eddie and Venom exchanging their “I love you.” He’s trending on Twitter.

“I’m trending on Twitter under the term ‘Alienfucker Eddie Brock.’”

Anne barks out a laugh then presses her hand to her mouth to stay quiet. “I’m sorry. It was only a matter of time, though, if you think about it.”

“Everyone online, like, doesn’t even know what they’re protesting anymore. Everybody’s just obsessed with Vee now.” Eddie sighs. “We sucked up all the oxygen.”

“Hmm, if only there was some kind of progressive reporter with extreme bias and understanding of exactly what’s going on that could shed some light on—”

“Since when do you want me to get my show back?”

Anne hands Eddie his cup of tea. “Since this is a story that should have a subjective lens, and you were the only popular reporter in the Bay Area that did that.”

“Hmm.”

Eddie stubbornly drinks his tea in silence.

There is no knock on the door. Venom seeps through the ceiling like slime and crawls down through Eddie’s shoulders, and Dre walks right into the kitchen and holds his hand out for Anne to shake.

“You must be Anne. It’s very nice to meet you,” he says in a completely different tone of voice than his usual speech pattern.

Venom presses its mass deliberately, gently, through every part of Eddie’s body and then licks the side of his face. **_Missed you._ **

_Missed you, too._

“Nice to meet you, too, Dre,” Anne responds. “How did you get in here?”

Dre points at the ceiling. “Well, Vee and I split so it could come in through the crown molding, and I just walked in the front door. It was open.”

Eddie makes a confused face at Dre, but Dre just makes a confused face back. Eddie doesn’t get why he’s being so formal with Anne.

 **_Dre, tell them what you figured out,_ **Venom says, protruding from Eddie’s shoulder.

“Oh, right. So, the way Venom’s biology works, it’s multiplicative. It can leave parts of itself inside of people but then still be the full sum of its parts in Eddie.”

Eddie and Anne stare at him. Dre looks between both of them and takes a deep breath, like he’s cultivated patience over years of always being the smartest person in the room.

He continues, “So if someone is a good match, the way I am, Venom could leave a little biomass in them but not lose any part of itself. Theoretically, it could exist in several people, probably up to, like, a hundred people, and still be fully inside Eddie. Eddie’s like home base.”

“Alright, so you’re saying that what you and I did tonight, switching who has Venom, we could do with a bunch of different people?”

**_Yes._ **

Dre nods and takes a seat next to Eddie.

“Well, that sounds like the injections that Dr. Skirth was working on,” Anne says.

“Not exactly,” Dre says, still talking in a formal tone, like he’s giving a presentation. “Venom couldn’t inhabit someone with injections. It has to be organic.” He moves his hands in a circle. “The point is that if some more people had access to Venom, then we wouldn’t have to constantly fool the cops into thinking neither I nor Eddie has it.”

“Oh, I like that,” Eddie says.

**_You don’t mind sharing?_ **

Eddie turns to Venom and bumps their foreheads together affectionately as he says, “Of course not, I know you’re mine.”

Anne makes a fake disgusted noise as Eddie gives Venom a quick kiss and then returns his attention back to Dre.

Dre’s eyes widen. “Uh. I knew you guys were in some kind of mutually beneficial relationship, but I don’t think I fully realized the extent to which you two are…”

Eddie can feel his neck and ears turning red. “Oh god, um, sorry. I just assumed that you knew that Vee and I are, you know, um…”

“Married,” Anne says. “The word you’re looking for is ‘married.’”

Eddie flips her off.

“OK, so that means…” Dre looks down at the counter, his eyes shifting from side to side like he’s thinking. “So I have another theory that Vee could _create_ better matches with potential hosts if it, uh, had a relationship with them. Like an intimate one.”

**_And I think he’s right because Anne felt like a stronger host for me after I had to be close to her and Dan so I wouldn’t die when I was separated from Eddie._ **

Eddie laughs. “Oh my god, so we find all the alienfuckers in San Francisco? Have a little sex, leave a little symbiote matter in them?”

Anne sighs and says, “Christ, it’s three in the morning. Can we just—”

 **_We can test on you, Annie._ ** Venom drops its chin to Eddie’s shoulder. **_Since you want to have sex with me._ **

“Oh my fucking god,” Eddie says, pressing his thumb and index fingers to his closed eyes.

“I mean, a lot of people want to,” Dre says. He pulls out his phone and scrolls through it. “I’m in every circle of hell on the internet, so I’ve, uh, seen some things.”

Anne scoots over toward Dre, looking down at his phone.

 _“Really?”_ Eddie asks.

Anne shrugs at him. “What? I can be the test subject. We already know Vee’s not gonna accidentally kill me if it uses me as a host, and now we don’t have to pretend like I _don’t_ want to have sex with it. Being one of its surrogate hosts sounds great.” She keeps looking at Dre’s phone, then reaches a hand toward it and says, “Wait, wait, scroll back up. What’s that?”

Dre and Anne both put their faces closer to the phone and tilt their heads to the side as Dre zooms in on something. “Oh yeah, that’s, like, a BDSM thing. Weird. I bet Vee could do it though.”

Eddie folds his arms on the counter and drops his head against them. He can feel Venom elongate its neck so it can also see Dre’s phone.

The three of them mutter to each other, Vee confirming that it can in fact do whatever it is they’re looking at, then Dre and Anne asking it other questions as they keep scrolling through horny hell. Dre switches back to his regular vernacular, apparently comfortable enough with Anne now that they are discussing alien sex positions. Eddie wants to die.

Dre yawns, and Anne immediately offers him the couch and apologizes for not having a third bedroom. Eddie wishes them a good night and tugs at Venom’s threads to drag it to bed.

 _What happened after I left?_ Eddie asks once they’re curled up in bed together, Eddie on his side and Venom using tentacles to spoon him.

Its face noses at his neck. **_Being with Dre was different. He is very strong and very good at understanding my body, but our minds didn’t meld together nearly as well as you and I do. I missed you the whole time._ **

Eddie grabs a tentacle at his waist and squeezes it. _It was only a few hours._

**_We couldn’t protect everyone. Most of the crowd scattered, but the police arrested a few people. When the helicopters started flying again, Dre realized we were causing more trouble than preventing it, so we ran back here._ **

_Mm. I’m glad you’re alright._

In one quick movement, Venom slides a tentacle down the front of Eddie’s boxer briefs, pushing them off completely, and rubs his cock to hardness, then it sneaks a tendril around his hole and slides its way in easily, using its own secretions as lube.

 _Oh alright,_ Eddie says, surprised. He rolls his hips, trying to hit all the right angles. _You sure you’re up for this? Aren’t you tired?_

Venom peppers his back in kisses. **_Sex helps us recover. Think about it._ **

Venom sends mental images to Eddie of all the times they’ve fucked after going through something difficult, and how much better they both felt after it. Seeing the memories from Venom’s perspective, seeing _himself_ getting fucked by his alien, makes him come painfully hard all over Venom’s tentacle.

Venom rumbles a laugh and moves its head between Eddie’s legs to clean him up with its tongue. **_You like watching yourself._ **

Eddie rolls to his back, spreads his legs and pets the top of Venom’s head. _Yeah, apparently._

**_You're also very bad at staving off pleasure. You know it would feel better for both of us if you waited longer before coming?_ **

_Sure, but I can't do that._

**_Mm. You're too spoiled._ **

The door creaks, and Eddie looks up in a panic but then relaxes when he sees Anne peering in at them.

“Sorry,” she whispers. She looks at Venom’s head between Eddie’s legs and swallows. “I was just, um. Wanted to make sure you were alright. I won’t be offended if you don’t want to share Venom with me.”

Venom ignores her in favor of nipping and sucking at Eddie’s thighs. 

Eddie gestures for her to come over.

She closes the door behind her and joins him on the bed, tucking herself up against his side and resting a hand on his chest.

“When you were stressed out on the phone with me the other day, you said you loved me,” she says.

“Yeah, and you said it back.” Eddie lazily digs his fingers into the top of Venom’s head.

Venom licks its way around his groin.

“What is it, um, doing to you?” Anne asks, looking at Venom’s head.

“I don’t know. Whatever it wants, I guess,” Eddie replies. “It just fucked me.”

Venom moves then, sliding up Eddie’s body and draping itself over him, burrowing its head against his neck, on the opposite side of Anne.

Anne rubs her hand up and down Eddie’s abdomen. “So, um, would it be up for…?”

Eddie huffs a laugh. Venom stirs and lazily slithers over toward Anne, its tendrils reaching for her and exploring, hesitant. Eddie stays perfectly still.

“Yeah, come here,” Anne whispers sweetly as she twines her fingers through Venom’s threads and pulls it toward her body.

Eddie just watches as more and more of Venom flows out of him through his skin. Tentacles gently remove Anne’s clothes and hold her by the hips, lifting her off the bed slightly as Venom’s mouth works at her breasts and up her collarbone.

“Are you—are you doing anything?” Anne asks Eddie, breathless.

“No. Just sharing memories with Vee, you know, of what you like.”

Venom noses at Anne’s jaw and mutters, **_Can I kiss you, Annie?_ **

Anne presses her hand to its cheek and draws it up as she says, “Yes.”

A surge of warmth and affection washes over Eddie when they kiss. He closes his eyes and feels everything Venom feels, a closed loop of both of them feeling hopelessly in love with Anne.

Venom eventually moves its head down Anne’s torso and works its way between her legs, licking and sucking her skin as tenderly as it did to Eddie. Eddie turns to his side and watches, one hand tangled through Anne’s hair as she comes apart. He can feel Venom’s threads pulling, connecting all three of their bodies together. It eats Anne out painstakingly slowly, reverently, treating her cunt like it’s sacrosanct. 

_Eddie,_ Anne says through Venom’s strands. _Eddie, please. Please, I need you._

Eddie wraps his arm around her middle and takes control of two tentacles and coils them under her in a tight embrace. He presses his mouth to her neck and flattens his tongue against her skin and suctions around it.

She arches into his touch, her whole body tensing and causing Venom to sink deeper into her veins, as she says, “Oh goddamn it, your _lips,_ I forgot.”

Eddie laughs against her neck. 

Anne grabs him around the back and rolls him on top of her, but Venom doesn’t move its head out of the way. Instead, it turns its maw so it can suck Eddie back to hardness, and then it uses its tongue and a few malleable tendrils to guide Eddie’s cock into Anne’s cunt, pulsating around both of them as it works.

Eddie drops his weight fully on top of Anne, symbiote matter squished and seeping between them, all of them remaining completely still for a moment until Anne sets the rhythm.

It’s slow and soft and probably the most vanilla sex Eddie has had with either Anne or Venom. He’s never felt so safe in his life. 

Venom buries itself deep inside both of their bodies, working on a cellular level, so that they all come at the same time. Eddie and Anne gasp in shock then both laugh. Eddie collapses on top of her and presses kisses to her neck.

“Oh fucking hell,” Anne says through panted breaths. She digs her fingers into Eddie’s back and squeezes him. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

Eddie laughs against her cheek. “I’m not _that_ good, Annie.”

She nudges her face against him and scoffs. “You’ve gotten so used to fucking Venom, you don’t even notice how good it is.”

“Hmm.” He groans and shifts, using Venom’s threads to push himself effortlessly to the side, half of his body still resting against Anne, Venom all around them in a messy heap. “You know, I never really thought much about, like, having sex with Vee before having sex with it. I was too weirded out by it all to actually, um, fully enjoy it.” He kisses the space below her ear. “You don’t have the same problem, obviously.”

She kisses his forehead. “I’m sorry. It was weird there for a while, wasn’t it?” She grabs a tendril and twirls it around her finger. “But now this all feels so natural.”

Venom moves between them both, sliding down their bodies and pulling more of itself toward Anne, then Anne suddenly tenses and curses and scratches Eddie’s back hard enough to break skin.

“What? What’s wrong?” Eddie asks, worried.

“What the fuck. What the—”

 **_Sorry._ ** Venom pops its head up innocently from between Anne’s legs. **_I didn’t hurt you, did I?_ **

“What did you _do?”_ Anne asks, nearly yelling.

Venom looks at Eddie and then back at Anne. **_You have to pee after sex, so I just removed the pee from your body for you so you didn’t have to get up?_ **

“Jesus Christ, Vee,” Eddie says. “You alright, Annie?”

 **_I’m sorry. Eddie lets me eat the fluid that comes out of his cock after sex and some of that was inside you, too, actually, so I thought it was a similar_ **—

“Please just shut up,” Eddie interrupts. “Please.”

Anne starts laughing. “OK, I see how it’s weird. Alien sex is definitely weird, I’m sorry.”

There’s a knock on the door. They hurriedly adjust to more neutral positions on the bed, lying flat on their backs next to each other, then Venom covers them both completely. Eddie grabs the duvet and pulls it up over all three of them.

Dan peeks into the room, wearing his white coat. He frowns at them.

“I’m about to go to work, have you guys slept at all tonight?” he whispers.

“No,” Anne answers. “I’m sorry, hon, Eddie got here really late. There’s a kid on the couch, too. Dre.”

“Yeah, um, he’s still awake, too. I was just talking to him actually,” Dan says. “Nice guy. So. Did you guys…?”

Eddie looks at Anne, hoping that she will answer so he doesn’t have to.

 **_We fucked, Dan,_ ** Venom says from under the duvet. **_It was great. Maybe next time you can be here, too. I think you’d enjoy watching at least._ **

Eddie puts his hands over his face.

Dan says, “Oh good. Was it as good as you thought it’d be, Annie?”

“Yeah, actually. But also very weird.”

“Eddie.” Dan waits until Eddie looks at him before he continues, “It’s alright, buddy. You and Venom have something special with Anne, and that’s fine.”

A beat passes. Eddie says quietly, “You know we’re in love with her, right? You sure you’re alright with it?”

Dan smiles softly and crosses the room. He gives Anne a kiss on the lips and then he cups the back of Eddie’s head and kisses his forehead. Eddie chases the kiss, leaning his head forward even after Dan has let him go. 

“I’m cool with it, Eddie.” He ruffles the covers like he’s trying to give Venom a friendly pat. “You guys get some sleep, I’ll see you later.”

After Dan leaves, Anne curls herself up under Eddie’s arm and kisses him.

“So, no chance you and Dan break up and you marry me and Vee?” 

She pokes him in the chest. “That’s not what you want.”

He turns toward her and pulls her forward by the hip. Venom disappears entirely, but it sucks half of itself back into Eddie and the other half into Anne.

“No. It’s not,” Eddie admits. “But I do love you, and I would love more nights like this with you.”

A smile pulls at her lips. She presses her hand to his cheek. “My sweet Eddie.”

“Is that you talking or Vee?”

“Me, I think.” She kisses him again. “So, do you think we did it? Could I keep some of Venom in me permanently?”

 **_I think so,_ ** Venom says sleepily. **_We can try in the morning. Go to sleep._ **

Eddie and Anne both laugh. Anne says, “Goodnight, hon.”

“Night, Annie.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: After Eddie/Venom/Anne have sex, Venom removes pee from inside Anne's body but does not tell her or Eddie that it is going to do that, so it shocks them both. It's not a kink thing, just Venom being weird.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New information comes to light about the SFPD. Venom gets sick of the cops coming after them and takes matters into its own hands, and the cops try to make a deal with it.

Eddie and Venom stir awake before Anne in the late morning and debate whether they should try to separate from her _without_ waking her up or if they should wake her up.

They try the first option and spend several minutes yanking and tugging until she wakes up with an annoyed groan.

“Ow,” she complains. “Why.”

Eddie gives up, relaxing back onto the bed. “We can’t separate. What are you doing?”

Anne shifts; Eddie feels his insides move like the pinching of skin. 

“So I think it worked,” Anne says. “Vee’s stuck."

 **_Yeah, I embedded parts of myself in you last night but I think I fucked something up,_ ** Venom says. **_I’ve accidentally stuck you guys together._ **

Eddie sighs his frustration then shouts, “Dre? Are you up?”

“Eddie, we’re naked!” Anne says, scandalized. 

“What’s up, man?” Dre shouts back from the living room.

“Uh, hold on!” Eddie says. “We need some help, but hold on.”

Venom helps them synchronize their movements, but it’s still uncomfortable and somewhat painful to get clothes on. Venom has several threads connecting them in various parts of their bodies, and every time they move too abruptly in opposing directions it lurches and tugs within them.

When Dre comes in, he looks back and forth between them and taps his fingers against his thigh. After a minute, he says, “Try and let Vee take over, see if they could sort itself out in they own body.”

Venom takes over immediately, consuming both Eddie and Anne within its frame and causing Dre to double over laughing.

 **_“What’s funny?”_ **Eddie-Anne-Venom asks.

“Y’all got tits and curves and stupid big muscles. Vee, you look stupid as fuck.”

Venom flips him off.

It takes a few minutes of trial-and-error to get the proper ratio of Venom to lodge inside Anne before it’s able to push her out of its body and then suck fully back inside Eddie. Dre does a silly little dance when they’re done.

“Man, I’m good,” he says smugly. “Y’all welcome.”

Eddie rolls his eyes and pats Dre on the shoulder on his way out of the room. “You dork,” he teases.

Anne rushes to get ready so she can work a half-day, leaving Eddie and Dre to drown in cable news and endless social media posts about the protests. Eddie has several missed calls, texts and emails, and he makes a combination of breakfast and lunch food for him and Dre while opening an email from Solomon. 

The email is short, just a few sentences explaining that he’s been in touch with several lawyers, activists and a civil rights group that have been working on a report for a year or two and have rushed the process of publishing it in light of everything going on. The last sentence says, _“This is why the Avengers are on your side.”_ There’s an attachment to the report.

“Fuck,” Eddie says, staring at his phone and ignoring the pancakes burning on the stove. A tentacle reaches out to turn the burners off. 

“What’s up?” Dre asks from where he’s also staring at his phone at the kitchen table. 

“Um. It’s…” Eddie keeps reading.

“Dude, what?”

Eddie snaps out of it. “Sorry. It’s, um—do you know about the reports on the Chicago Police Department from, like, the ‘80s and ‘90s? When they were exposed for torturing prisoners?”

“Not just prisoners, they was torturing everybody,” Dre says. 

“Yeah, uh, a civil rights group just published a similar report on the SFPD, not as comprehensive, but. They have tons of interviews, and it’s, um. It’s bad.”

Venom pops out of Eddie’s shoulder and looks at his phone. **_We should eat all of the cops._ **

Eddie knocks his head against Venom’s. “Yeah, this is bad.”

“So, you do eat cops, then?” Dre asks as he joins them at the counter. “I been wondering.”

**_We eat bad people._ **

“When I was in Vee, I felt that they, like, hunger for human meat or whatever,” Dre says awkwardly. “Anybody who’s a temporary host would need to know that in advance, you know. Need to know what they getting into.”

**_I could only eat people while I’m with Eddie though, if other hosts are uncomfortable with it._ **

Eddie holds his phone up. “Yeah, um, we can sort all that out later, guys. The SFPD’s been torturing witnesses since way before they had the symbiote injections.” 

“I mean, I coulda told you that, man. Me and my boys, they never tell us nothing about our rights or nothing when they come pick us up. I been arrested for wearing the wrong color shirt, Eddie.” Dre laughs. “And I ain’t never done nothing like eat no cops.”

“Hey, how’d everybody at the protests know about you, man?”

Dre turns the burners back on and keeps cooking the food Eddie abandoned. “I recorded my arrest. Not the first one I ever recorded, either, but it was the first one got folks’ attention. I mentioned Venom in the video.”

Venom moves its head toward the stove and licks a sizzling piece of bacon right out of the pan. **_Was your phone call with Eddie in that video, too?_ **

“Oh god, yeah, you were saying the cops thought you had Vee,” Eddie says.

Venom uses a tentacle to shove food into Eddie’s mouth.

“Yeah, I’m surprised you ain’t seen it online. People was real confused, I was catching up on it all when you left me in Oakland.”

Venom tries to push food into Dre’s mouth, too, but he bats the tentacle away and scoffs at it.

“What you doing, man?” 

**_You’re very skinny._ **

Eddie takes the bacon out of Venom’s tentacle and pops it into his mouth. “Don’t shove food in people’s faces, babe. Sorry, Dre.”

Eddie gets a text from Anne telling him to turn on cable news. The TV is already on in the living room, so Eddie just turns the volume up and sees the report Solomon sent him, with an anchor reading some of the more horrifying bits. 

“Like, the interview I did with Skirth was fine,” Eddie says, distracted. “But she was really only talking about the symbiote stuff, which people could easily write off as fake. But this...this is, like, showing that the cops have been doing this shit whether they had special powers or not.”

 **_And now the news is talking about the police and not you,_ **Venom adds.

The segment shifts, and a picture of Officer Jacobsen appears on the screen. Eddie turns the volume up once again.

_“...Jacobsen passed away early this morning due to heart complications, according to the San Francisco Police Department.”_

“Holy shit,” Eddie says.

They give a description of Jacobsen’s accomplishments, then the anchor says the police declined to comment on whether Jacobsen was part of the “alien cell experiment.” The next clip is part of Dora’s interview with Eddie, where she describes how Jacobsen unhinged his jaw and ate a prisoner’s head off their body. 

_“...Two other officers are in critical condition at San Francisco General Hospital, names of patients not provided…”_

Eddie calls Dora.

“It’s happening faster than you thought,” Eddie says when she answers.

“What is?” she responds. Her kids are playing loudly in the background.

“Jacobsen’s dead.”

“Oh, my,” Dora says barely above a whisper. “They’re going to be coming for me.”

Eddie listens as Dora has a muffled conversation with Deena. 

“Dora?” he asks. “You didn’t hurt them on purpose. You did exactly what they forced you to do.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t mean they aren’t going to kill me. God, I was safer with Drake.” She sighs. “I have some things to figure out. I’ll talk to you later, Eddie.”

She hangs up before he can say anything else.

Eddie tries to talk to Dre about it to see what they should do, but before he’s even gotten through explaining what Dora’s been through, they hear sirens and people shouting outside on the street.

 **_That’s a lot of cops,_ **Venom says.

Dre and Eddie look at each other.

“They don’t know I’m here, let me take Vee,” Dre says quickly. “Record it, put it on YouTube. We being swatted.”

“We’re what?”

“Man, you a journalist!” Dre grips Eddie’s forearm, squeezing his hand hard against the tattoo of Venom’s veins. “How you not know about swatting? You _been_ swatted before, two fucking days ago.”

Venom sucks rapidly out of Eddie’s arm and attaches to Dre, bulking up and knocking its head into the ceiling before it even lets go of him. Eddie feels his insides move like liquid flowing through his organs, the part of Venom still in him lodging itself deep. It moves its hand from around his forearm to his face and lightly caresses his cheek.

**_“My Eddie. So small.”_ **

“Babe, stop being weird when you have Dre in you.”

The door bursts open and falls completely off its hinges, a SWAT team pouring in on top of it in their tactical gear with M-16s at the ready and shouting for everyone to put their hands up. Eddie holds his phone up.

“Ah, so we’re being swatted. Got it,” he mutters.

Venom gently pushes Eddie behind it and waits for the cops to start shooting before it tosses them around the apartment one by one. A couple of the guys see Eddie recording and try to get to him, but Venom easily keeps them back, and Eddie knows, he can feel, that Venom doesn’t have to have eyes on him to know exactly where he is and how to protect him. He’s as safe outside of Venom as he is inside it. 

The SWAT team came ill-prepared. They only try to attack Venom with their rifles and don’t even seem to realize how fruitless it is that it’s absorbing their bullets. Dre moves Venom’s body not like a human but more like an octopus or a jellyfish, limbs too numerous to count sprouting out from its body as it undulates through the room like it’s in water, catching every single bullet so Anne’s apartment sustains no real damage. After just a few minutes, it has every member of the SWAT team wrapped in individual tentacles, their bodies trapped from neck to feet within sticky symbiote matter held a few inches above the ground in every direction. Venom turns its head to Eddie and sticks its tongue out at the camera. 

“They alright?” Eddie asks.

Dre-Venom blinks and nods. **_“Yeah, they good.”_** They turn toward the SWAT team. **_“Any you guys get seriously hurt?”_ **

It takes a moment for anyone to answer. Finally one guy yells, “Eddie Brock, we were called here because you keep being seen with this alien. He needs a host, doesn’t he? So if you’re not the host, then why the fuck are you here?”

Venom moves the guy close to its face and spits out, **_“Because we’re married.”_ **

“...Wh-what?” the guy asks awkwardly as he tries to angle his head away from Venom’s lolling tongue.

**_“Why do you keep attacking us? When will you people give up?”_ **

The guys all start shouting over one another in an attempt to answer, but Venom moves tendrils up under their face shields and covers their mouths.

**_“I don’t actually care. I’m going to put you outside and you can leave forever. Thanks.”_ **

A tentacle opens a window so Venom can slide each member of the SWAT team out the side of the building and back to their cars. Eddie records all of it, live-streaming to YouTube.

Once its limbs are free, Venom sidles up next to Eddie and takes the phone out of his hand. It holds it up to record both of them.

 **_“Make sure to check out the expos_** ** _é_ ** **_on the San Francisco Police Department. I’m Venom, that’s Eddie Brock, and you’re watching The Eddie Brock Report.”_ **Venom cuts the video off and hands the phone back to Eddie, then it grabs his right arm again and seamlessly transfers back into him, leaving Dre yawning and scratching the back of his hair.

“It’s, like, kinda tiring being in there,” Dre says.

“Was that you or Vee deciding that that was an episode of my show?” Eddie asks, annoyed.

 **_Me,_ ** Venom says. **_You need a job._ **

Dre raises his eyebrows in agreement. “YouTube’s prolly a better platform for your show than cable anyway, know what I’m saying?”

Eddie rolls his eyes and checks his phone. Dozens of people are commenting on his video, most of them thrilled to see that his show is back. He sees the word “alienfucker” several times before closing out of YouTube.

“What’s the plan, Eddie?” Dre asks as he walks over to a window and looks outside. “They gon be back with more firepower.” 

Eddie’s phone rings and buzzes with multiple texts and phone calls coming in at once, many of them from numbers he doesn’t recognize. 

“Um,” he says as he tries to sort through his messages. “Looks like they’re doing a press conference later this afternoon with a bunch of local politicians, and Vee’s invited.”

Venom comes out of his left shoulder and rests its head against Eddie’s cheek. **_That sounds lame. I don’t want to be associated with politicians._ **

“What the hell do you know about politics?” Eddie asks.

**_Stuff I learned from your brain. We should do our own thing and keep posting our own videos. Fuck everything else._ **

“Shit, Eddie, the news is here,” Dre says, still looking out the window. “Vans pulling up now.”

“Alright, uh, let’s just both get inside Vee and get the fuck out of here.”

They move quickly, Venom consuming them both and then leaving through the front door, climbing up the side of the apartment as a news crew shouts up at them. They travel over tops of buildings, occasionally stopping to observe the protests, which have way more people than before, flooding several streets of San Francisco. Every time someone spots Venom from the street, everybody shouts and cheers and waves. One person even uses a megaphone to ask, “Where’s your husband?”

_Babe, please don’t—_

**_“Eddie is safe,”_ ** Venom shouts down, ignoring Eddie. **_“What about you guys? Do you need any help?”_ **

Another person talks over a megaphone. “Yeah, tell Captain America to shove it! We don’t want the fucking Avengers here!”

Several other people start yelling in agreement, with many of them saying they hope Venom isn’t planning on joining the Avengers and that they want it to remain the mascot of the Bay Area.

Venom preens under the praise, going so far as to strike a bashful pose and ask the crowd if they really like it that much. A resounding cheer rises up in response. 

Dre laughs in their shared consciousness as Eddie says, _Alright, sweetheart, you’re very cute, c’mon._

As they keep moving through the city, they see patrol cars converge below them and a few helicopters fly toward them from above. When Venom stops on the roof of a building and looks around at all of them, nothing happens. 

**_“Are y’all finally sick of shooting at me?”_ **Eddie-Dre-Venom asks loudly.

Nobody answers them.

Venom keeps moving.

 _They might just tail us indefinitely, man,_ Dre says while they run. _They tryna catch us doing something._

Venom turns just enough to count four police cars following them. **_So let’s let them catch us doing something,_ **it says.

They switch directions and run at full speed until they reach a county jail, one of the smaller ones and the only one that has women inmates. Venom doesn’t have to explain anything to Eddie or Dre; they’re all on the same page. Eddie uses tendrils to fish his phone out of his pocket and then he forms a steady selfie-stick-shaped tentacle to start a video. 

They walk in the front door. The officers are so caught off guard that Venom confiscates all their weapons before they even have a chance to fire at it. Eddie and Dre work together to wrap all the weapons up in Venom’s arms and crush them into a useless ball. Venom is twice its size and power, so most of the officers raise their hands in surrender and run out the door with Venom escorting them.

 **_“Find a different job,”_ **it says as it waves goodbye.

One of the last officers to head for the door is a hybrid, so Venom places a gentle hand on his chest to stop him.

 **_“You should go to a hospital,”_ ** it says seriously. **_“Otherwise you’re going to die soon.”_ **

The cop looks up at them, confused, scared, and it looks like he’s seen better days, and he nods like he understands. He leaves slowly, his right foot dragging against the floor as he goes. 

**_Skirth really did poison a bunch of cops,_ **Venom thinks.

 _Yeah, y’all scientist friend freaks me out,_ Dre says. 

They extend several tentacles to open the doors of the jail, releasing all the inmates in a matter of minutes. Some of the freed inmates sprint for the door, obviously terrified, but more of them hang back and stare at Venom warily.

“What is this?” a woman asks loudly from across the room, where she’s pressed against a wall like she’s trying to hide.

Venom grins at her. **_“The cops won’t get off my back, so I’m ruining their day. You all can go now.”_ **

Several more of them move toward the door. Another woman peeking out of a hallway says, “Wait, are you that gay alien?”

Venom blinks. **_“Yes.”_ **

Eddie takes control of its body to get it to leave before they’re asked more questions. His phone is still recording.

On their way to the second county jail, a couple of news vans catch up with them in addition to the cops. There are patrol cars and helicopters both, but they still don’t make any moves toward Venom. Some protesters pack into cars to join them as well, including Marie driving an SUV with Mrs. Chen in the passenger seat and several people crammed into the back. Marie pulls up next to Venom and honks at it.

“Hey, Vee, you look different!” Marie shouts. “Who you got in there?”

 **_“Oh, are you a narc now? I'm not telling you shit,"_** Venom shouts back. Then, **_“Don’t you ladies have jobs? What are you doing out here?”_ **

Mrs. Chen leans over Marie and points a finger out the window. “You think I can run my store with this shit going on? I boarded up!”

Eddie rolls his eyes, which Venom visualizes to Mrs. Chen by childishly sticking its tongue out at her. Eddie-Venom says, **_“Nobody’s gonna loot your store, Chen, you don’t have anything in there!”_ **

Mrs. Chen flips them off, then says to Marie, “That’s Eddie.”

**_“Jesus, Chen, shut the fuck up!”_ **

Dre thinks, _Eddie, you still recording?_

 _Christ, yeah. Let me_ —

**_No, don’t stop it. It’s good to show that we have friends. It humanizes us._ **

_What the fuck do you know about that?_ Eddie asks. _You’re not even human._

**_I’m right though._ **

_Yo, can y’all argue about this shit later? Like, when I’m not here? Our brains is too connected and it’s real trippy feeling like I’m somehow involved in y’all marriage._

Venom laughs while Eddie apologizes.

At the second county jail, the cops following them attempt to stop Venom but are clearly unwilling to get too close for fear of losing their weapons and dignity, so instead they switch tactics and try to stop the inmates from leaving. The only thing Venom has to do is make itself into a wall to protect the freed inmates, giving them a clear path out the door and shuttling them into protesters’ cars. Some of the protesters even give rides to a couple of the hybrid cops that recognize that they’re in deep shit and need to go to a hospital. Eddie live-streams all of it. 

As they continue through the city, the cops seemingly give up in their pursuit. The choppers veer off course, the patrol cars turn off their lights and peel away one by one. By the time Venom clears out the last jail, there are only news vans and a handful of protesters following it. It’s an eerily quiet trip over to the press conference. 

There are hundreds of people gathered outside, facing a large stage with several people in suits standing in the wings. A well-dressed white woman is giving a speech, but she stops abruptly when everyone notices Venom hanging off the side of a building. The cheers rise up.

As the crowd chants, “Ven-om, Ven-om, Ven-om,” the woman onstage speaks loudly into the microphone. 

“Venom, thank you for joining us,” she says so sincerely that Venom laughs. She continues, “If you’ll come down to the stage, we’d like to ask you some questions about where you came from, who you are, what your purpose—”

 **_“Yeah, I’m not doing any of that,”_ ** Venom answers. **_“What’s the deal with these fucking cops? Are they gonna get off my back or what?”_ **

The crowd cheers louder.

The woman stutters and looks around at the other people in the wings. Nobody helps her. As if on cue, two helicopters appear overhead, shining bright lights down on Venom.

**_“Look, we got a lot going on in this city, and I don’t get why you would invite me here just to do a Q &A when you could spend your time doing literally anything else. You already know I’m an alien. Now I’d really like to be left alone, and I’d love it if you useless pieces of shit would do something about these FUCKING COPS.”_ **

Venom jumps, latches onto one of the helicopter’s landing skids, and pulls it down to rest on top of a building. With its eyes fixed on the stage, it juts tentacles out of its back and wraps them around the blades, incapacitating the chopper. It then reaches up, making its hand and arm impossibly bigger so it can easily pull the second helicopter down, still without taking its eyes away from the stage.

**_“If I wanted the cops to be dead, they’d be dead. I am tired of this. Leave us the fuck alone.”_ **

There’s tense muttering from the crowd, then piercing feedback from the microphone, then the white woman speaks much quieter, in a terrified voice, agreeing to let Venom be.

 **_“And Eddie Brock. Dre Kemble. Are you taking notes? Dora and Deena Skirth. Clear all of their fucking records.”_ ** Venom looks at the camera that Eddie is still holding off to their right. It then sweeps its eyes over the crowd and sees a mix of terror and wonder on people’s faces. **_“You all have a nice day.”_ **

Eddie turns the video off. Venom leaps over the crowd, crawling over buildings and sprinting on four legs toward Eddie’s old apartment. Nobody follows them.

 _That seemed a little too easy,_ Eddie says.

 _No way they leaving us alone,_ Dre replies. _But the cops got bigger problems to worry about for now, so they won’t try nothing until they know they got what they need to take us down._

**_They’ll never have what they need to take us down._ **

_I don’t know, man, next time they swat you they could play that sound and light you on fire, and then you dead._

_Why are we going to my apartment?_ Eddie asks. 

**_We haven’t been there in forever, and this is most likely the safest time to go. Dre, if I’m embedded into enough people, couldn’t I still survive an attack like that?_ **

_Well, nah, but that ain’t the right way to look at it. If enough folks is available for you to use as a host, you just move to another person when they come to attack you,_ Dre explains.

_Like we did in the precinct, when you went to Anne._

**_Hm. And what about the cops? What about the torture?_ **

Dre laughs. _Homie, you can’t solve that shit on your own. You just be the mascot of the city, find some more hosts, and Eddie, do your reporting. Y’all be alright._

 _What about you?_ Eddie says.

_I be here whenever you need me._

Before they reach Eddie’s apartment, his phone rings with multiple calls at once. Dre slides his right arm over to attach to Venom's right side so Eddie’s hands are free to answer.

“Eddie! Thank god. You have to get downtown,” Dan says in a tone more worried than Eddie’s ever heard him. 

“What? We were just there, what—”

“It’s Anne. She said some officers came to her job, I don’t know, I don’t—she said to tell you to go down—”

“Got it. Thanks, Dan,” Eddie says before hanging up. 

Dre-Venom changes course and speeds up to get downtown faster while Eddie checks his other calls, but he has nothing from Anne. Panic rises in him. He reaches deep into Venom’s mind and says, _Please help._

He knows Dre can hear him, too, but he can deal with the embarrassment of being vulnerable in front of a man 20 years his junior if it means the three of them avoid having a panic attack. Venom sends liquidy strands straight through Eddie’s skin and into his bones, searching for the worry like it could be found in his physical body, and impossibly it does find it, and it soothes and soothes and soothes until Eddie feels like he can breathe again. He can still feel the worry, but Venom has it locked inside a box with itself as the key. 

As they get closer to downtown, protesters point them in the exact direction they need to go. Whatever is going on, it must be meant for Venom.

Most of the narrow streets are filled with people, but one block has a clear delineation between the protesters and cops, so Venom crawls down the side of a building and stands in front of the protesters, facing the police.

_Annie._

“Don’t move,” a cop commands in a deep, raspy voice.

Anne is standing among the cops, with her arms behind her back and several guns pointed at her, her maroon suit starkly contrasted with the black uniforms surrounding her. She looks into Venom’s eyes and sets her jaw, her face marked by fear and rage.

 **_“What are you doing with her?”_ **Venom asks calmly.

The same voice answers. All the cops have face shields, so it’s difficult to tell who’s speaking. “You are an alien threat wreaking havoc on our city.”

The protesters begin booing and heckling.

The officer speaks over them. “You’ve attacked numerous officers and have _killed_ three of us. The inmates you released today are violent and dangerous criminals, and you dare to make demands of us to spare your friends!”

The energy of the crowd behind Venom bubbles up, but Venom remains calm. Eddie thinks it may have locked more than just worry in a box; it may have temporarily stripped all emotions from the three of them.

“We admit that we haven’t figured out how to control you, and until we figure out how to _kill_ you, we will instead make a deal with you,” the officer says, his voice breaking toward the end, confidence wavering.

Venom narrows its eyes into slits and leans forward menacingly. **_“The deal is you leave me alone, and in return I don’t kill every single one of you.”_**

The officers stir and shift and turn to one another, but the guy in charge shakes his M-16 in rage and then points it toward Anne. “We will kill your friends, do you understand me?” he yells. “We will kill her right here! Do you fucking understand me?”

The crowd attempts to push forward, their outrage palpable in the air, but Venom holds them back, protects them.

Then, Venom’s eyes flicker over to Anne. It tilts its chin down at her. She schools her expression and nods minutely.

**_“Do it.”_ **

The officer lowers his M-16 a fraction of an inch. “What?”

**_“Go ahead. Shoot her.”_ **

During the three seconds that the officers take to process what Venom has said, Anne forcibly slings her bit of symbiote out of her right side and knocks down two of the cops holding her, allowing her to take off at a run toward Venom before the cops begin firing. She gets hit once, near her hip, before Venom is able to curl her up in its mass and bulk itself up around her. 

_HOLY FUCKING SHIT THAT HURTS,_ she thinks into their overcrowded consciousness. 

Venom absorbs every bullet shot at it and slings out limbs to catch bullets headed for protesters. 

_Dre, are we alright with three of us in here?_ Eddie asks as he’s shoved to Venom’s middle and painstakingly creates two more arms protruding out of Venom’s chest.

 _Yeah, this shit is dope, man,_ Dre responds, sharing his childlike joy with them. 

_HEY. I JUST GOT SHOT. CAN SOMEONE IN HERE DO SOMETHING PLEASE._

**_I got you, Annie._ **

The officers don’t let up. They try to circle Venom, but it leaps around and weaves between them like it isn’t a giant monstrous beast taking up the whole street. One cop points a blowtorch at it, and Venom grabs the torch and tosses it a mile away and then snatches the cop up in its hand and holds her close to its face.

 _Don’t,_ Eddie says gently.

Out loud, Venom spits, **_“Why not? They were going to kill Annie here, in front of all these people.”_ **It opens its mouth wide and licks the cop’s face shield, considering.

_That’s not the way the world works. It’s not fair, but it’s how it is. Put her down._

Venom snarls, squeezes the cop tighter. Everything else around them has stopped.

 _He’s right, Vee,_ Dre says. _And just, like, on a personal level, I’mma barf if you eat somebody while I’m in here._

Venom immediately puts her down.

There is a weird, tense pause that is broken only when a very sweaty, very small white man runs, screaming, up to Venom and digs his hands into its left side, where Dre is.

“Take me! Take me in! I want to feel symbiosis!” he yells, his voice hoarse.

 **_“Yo, dude,”_ ** Dre-Venom says, trying to push the guy back, but he surges forward into Venom, trying to force himself through the malleable latticework. **_“That ain’t how this shit works, man! Back the fuck up!”_ **

_Oh my fucking god, here comes another one,_ Anne says from the right side. 

One after another, like they’re possessed, people approach Venom and stick their hands into it, shouting over each other, practically begging Venom to take them inside it. At least two of them offer to be eaten. The cops don’t do anything.

The shared consciousness is a jumble of _jesusfuckingchristfuckinghellfuckingshitfuck_

Venom very nearly knocks out several protesters as it shakes them off, peeling them out of itself like it’s swatting flies, getting rid of all of them just long enough to swing itself up onto the side of a building and climb away from the chaos.

 _What the fuck,_ Anne says.

 _So I guess it’s gon be easy to find folks that want a piece of Vee,_ Dre says.

Venom leaps and runs over tops of buildings and through less crowded streets, heading to Anne’s apartment. 

**_One or two of those people actually felt like they could be a match, which makes sense, considering my type of perfect host is recklessly brave._ **

_Wait, you mean me and Eddie? Ah shit, that’s cute,_ Dre says, sending warm feelings to their shared body.

 _Yeah, um, we’re gonna have to screen people. Like, really screen people,_ Eddie says. _I don’t want part of our body in every weird alien enthusiast in the city._

 _Our body?_ Anne asks. _Don’t you mean Vee’s body?_

 _No,_ Eddie says without hesitating. _Mine and Vee’s bodies are inextricably connected. Whatever bit of biomass we multiply to put in other people, that’s part of me, too._

**_Yeah, he’s right. My Eddie. Mine._ **

Anne and Dre both send vaguely grossed out signals to the shared consciousness. Eddie and Venom ignore them. 

They drop off Anne at her apartment, leaving her with a panicked version of Dan that Eddie selfishly savors. Not that Dan is his rival or anything, but it’s nice to see that his not-rival is also capable of being neurotic. Dan insists on closely examining her hip, even though she and Venom both assure him that it healed the bullet wound perfectly. 

It’s dark outside when they leave Anne’s. They go to Dre’s friend’s house in Oakland, and Venom eases Dre out of its body while on top of an apartment building. It then wraps its arms around him in a hug. 

Dre laughs against its chest and can’t even get his arms around its sides. 

Eddie takes control, sucking Venom back inside his body in one fluid motion and smiling at Dre. 

“Thanks for all your help the last couple days, man,” Eddie says. “Seriously, we’d be fucked without you.”

Dre looks down at the ground and tugs at one of his locs. “I got lucky. The day we met, when I realized who you was, dude, I lost my shit.” He shifts his feet. “You know, like, seeing all this stuff online for years, knowing all these enhanced people and aliens and shit is all real, but then having it right here in my city? Then becoming a part of it? Shit, man.”

Eddie pulls him in for a hug and pats his back a few times before letting him go. “It’s real, and it sucks.” He grips Dre’s shoulder. “Be safe. I’ll see you soon.”

Venom slides a delicate tendril across Dre’s cheek before they leave. It says, **_Bye, Dre. Love you._ **

Dre laughs as Eddie says, “Too much, baby. Too intense of an emotion for this kind of situation. Sorry, Dre.”

“Nah, it’s alright.” Dre smiles as Venom takes back over, bulking itself up around Eddie. “Reminds me of ma dukes. Love you, too, Vee.”

They go straight back to Eddie’s apartment, which is dingy and cold and very dusty. It’s quiet in Eddie’s building, but they can hear the sound of protests far off in other parts of the city. 

**_What did Dre mean? Who did I remind him of?_ **Venom asks as Eddie miraculously finds two bags of tater tots in the freezer and puts them in the toaster oven.

 _His mom,_ Eddie answers. _Which makes sense. You do act kind of motherly._

**_Thank you. Text Dre and tell him I said thank you._ **

Eddie checks his hip against the counter while he waits for the tater tots. He sends Dre a thank you text, then he texts Dora to make sure she's alright. Next, he scrolls through his phone and is overwhelmed by the amount of feedback on all his videos over the past few days. He has voicemails and texts from several of his old colleagues, offers from networks to reboot his show, offers from news outlets to write about Venom. He ignores everything and switches over to the news, where Venom has become a national story centered on the problems with the San Francisco Police Department and the way the city is dealing with everything: the exposé on the SFPD, the SFPD proving the lengths of their corruption by threatening to kill a civilian in cold blood, the hybrid cops clearly headed for death, Venom releasing all the inmates, the protests pouring through the streets, and so on and so on. Many people are scared of Venom, but alongside video footage of it nearly eating that cop is also video footage of it calling Eddie its husband, acting coy in front of crowds, gently warning hybrid cops that they need to go to a hospital. People online don't know what to make of it. 

**_Are you alright, Eddie?_ **Venom asks as it opens the toaster oven and holds a tater tot up to his mouth. 

Eddie blows on the tater tot then chomps down on it. _Yeah. Just trying to figure out what we do from here._

Venom doesn’t say anything, just continues feeding Eddie tater tots while he scrolls endlessly through his phone. 

They go through a routine in comfortable silence, Eddie doing a cursory cleaning of his apartment, changing the sheets on his bed, showering, shaving, frowning at the gray patchiness of his growing hair, brushing teeth and stripping down to his boxer briefs before settling into bed. Venom keeps most of itself inside him, with one thick tentacle wrapped around his midsection. 

As Eddie is drifting off to sleep, Venom says, **_I know what we should do._ **

_Hmm?_

**_We should get a pet._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the penultimate chapter! The last chapter is kind of a timestamp, very self-indulgent, which I'll be posting in the next couple days. This fic ended up being sooooooo different than I originally planned, probably because I did not actually have a plan lmao, and it's definitely the most plot-heavy, OC-filled fic I think I've ever written, so I would love to hear what you guys think about it.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> About two months later.

Eddie shifts onto his back with a groan, his body lethargic with too much pizza in it. Venom gets the signal and soothes him from the inside, and Eddie places a hand on his gut and pulls symbiote threads out of his skin, lacing his fingers with Venom’s. 

“We’ve gotta stop ordering pizza when you come over,” Joanna says as she comes into the room, completely naked except for a purple bonnet on her head, and also with a hand on her gut. She plops down on the bed next to Eddie and puts her hand over top of his, Venom’s threads crawling over her fingers delicately. “You’re getting a little belly.”

Eddie scoots over and slides an arm under her, then he bends his elbow up so he can scratch her bonnet. “You didn’t wear this when I first started coming over.”

“Right, like I’d wear a bonnet during a one-night stand with a white guy. Good one.”

Eddie kisses her forehead. “Wait, does my gut bother you? ‘Cause I can lose it, I only have it because Vee likes it, but I can convince it to just eat the extra fat whenever—”

“No, no.” Joanna pinches a bit of belly fat between her fingers, distorting one of his abdomen tattoos. “Please, that would be so hypocritical. Have you seen me?” She tangles her fingers with Venom and moves down to Eddie’s crotch, and when she wraps her hand around his cock, Venom pulses like a vibrator around him. 

“Goddamn it, how do you make it do that?” Eddie asks, exasperated, canting his hips up into her hand. 

Joanna giggles and presses her face to his neck, biting and sucking a hickey into his skin as she and Venom jerk him off. “When it touches me I can send thoughts to it, and it doesn’t send those thoughts to you. It’s fun.”

After just a few more seconds, Eddie wraps a tentacle around her waist and hoists her up onto his lap. Venom slides part of itself into her cunt and opens her up so she can easily sink down onto Eddie’s cock. She hums while she rides him, pressing her hands to her thighs and throwing her head back, looking devastatingly beautiful with her flower tattoos and soft curves and smooth brown skin peppered in stretch marks. Eddie digs his fingers into her hips and snakes two small tentacles around her stomach and up her chest, tweaking her nipples before wrapping gently around her neck and caressing her cheek.

She laughs and says breathlessly, “I love having sex with you two.”

Later, as they’re falling asleep, Eddie spoons her and drops light kisses to her shoulder while squeezing his arm around her soft belly.

“Hey,” he whispers against her skin.

“Hmm?” Joanna responds.

“Is it obvious on my show that I’ve put on weight?”

She laughs. “Yeah. Especially in your face.” She wiggles her butt back against his crotch. “Sweetie, if you’re self-conscious about it just talk to Vee.”

 **_I like you soft. Safe,_ ** Venom mutters sleepily as it swirls its strands through the inside of Eddie’s stomach. **_I like seeing evidence that I take good care of your body._ **

“Oh, to have a magic body positive alien living inside you,” Joanna jokes.

“Jo, I told you if you want to—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. I’m still thinking about it. How many other people have done it?”

“Just five.”

Venom slides out of Eddie’s fingers and presses insistently into Joanna’s skin. **_You would be a good match, Joanna. We are already so close to you, already know you so well, and you know_ ** **me** **_so well. It would be easy._ **

“I said I’d think about it!” she responds quickly. They’ve had this conversation so many times that she’s just going through the motions at this point. “Goodnight, Vee, Eddie.”

In the morning, Eddie drives his bike through town, taking the long way, stopping by his apartment so Venom can feed its cat. They got her from the shelter, and Venom insisted on picking out the smallest and dumbest-looking black kitten with half an ear chewed off, and it named her Rage despite Eddie’s suggestions of more reasonable names. She tolerates Eddie; she’s obsessed with Venom.

Eddie has time to drink three whole cups of coffee while he patiently waits for Venom to finish playing with Rage, then he gets back on his bike and heads to Mrs. Chen’s, waving at her through the window as he illegally parks out front. He greets the two homeless guys that sit outside Mrs. Chen’s store and hands them each $20.

He then looks up to the top of Mrs. Chen's building and extends a tentacle out, pulling himself up to the roof and laughing sheepishly when the homeless guys whoop at his trick. Dre’s already up there, smoking a bowl, his locs finally long enough to fall around his face instead of sticking up in every direction. He spots Eddie and grins widely at him, gesturing for him to sit on the ground next to him.

“What’s up, homie,” Eddie greets, clapping his hand against Dre’s and then taking a seat.

“Nah, dude, you ain’t calling me that,” Dre responds, laughing. He passes the bowl over to Eddie. (Dre figured out that Venom likes the effects of weed way more than it likes alcohol, so Eddie stopped drinking entirely and instead smokes somewhat regularly.)

“What? You call _me_ that.”

“Yeah, but I’m cool. You corny as fuck, Eddie.”

“Oh yeah, right, sure, you’re _very_ cool,” Eddie teases.

“Ay, that reminds me, check it out.” Dre pulls up the sleeve of his hoodie to reveal a forearm tattoo of some kind of cartoon character. 

“Ah man, Marie’s so good,” Eddie says as he places his hand under Dre’s forearm and lifts it up to admire the work. “What the fuck is this though?”

Dre makes fun of him for being old then explains, in excruciating detail, the plot of the anime the character is from. Since Dre doesn’t even take a breath while he’s talking, Eddie is left smoking the bowl alone and is blissfully high by the time Dre shuts up. Eddie does not retain even the name of the anime. 

“Cool,” Eddie says when Dre is done. “You’re definitely not corny.”

Dre punches him in the arm, then says, "Yo, you been seeing Dr. Reyes recently?"

Eddie frowns at him. "You can _not_ ask Naomi out."

"C'mon, man, just get me her number! Please. I thought we was homies."

Eddie dramatically throws his head back and closes his eyes. "Oh my fucking god. First of all, I don't think Naomi is into dudes. Second of all, even if she was, I have a thing with her _mom,_ Dre. And so does Vee. If you were going out with Naomi and you had Vee with you for some reason, and you guys...No, I just can't even think about it, alright? No."

Dre groans loudly. "Like I be doing anything when I got Vee with me anyway, man, that's gross. But whatever." Switching tone, he says, “Hey, Vee?”

 **_Hmm?_ **Venom responds drowsily, tingling in the surface of Eddie’s skin.

“You ready for our big day?” Dre asks. He grabs Eddie’s forearm and has to mentally tug to get Venom to go to him. “Shit, dude, how high are you?”

 **_Pretty fucking high,_ ** Venom says as it trudges lazily into Dre’s arm. **_Remind me what we’re doing again._ **

It takes so long for Venom to transfer to Dre that Eddie hears the response Dre gives. _My little cousin’s birthday party. She turning 5 and loves you, and we gon show up at the party and scare all her friends._

 _Have fun, babe,_ Eddie says. 

Dre lets go of Eddie’s arm. Venom’s head slowly emerges from Dre’s shoulder, its eyes bloodshot and its mouth twisted in a goofy grin as it leans over to give Eddie a kiss. 

**_Love you, Eddie. I’ll see you later._ **

Venom gives Eddie a peck on the lips and starts to pull away, but Eddie whines and twists his fingers into the threads of Venom’s neck to get a more proper goodbye out of it. Dre has his head turned away and is examining his fingernails, so Eddie doesn’t feel too embarrassed for taking his time. 

**_I’ll be back in a few hours,_ ** Venom mumbles in a soothing tone between kisses. **_And you can call me if you need me. I’ll miss you the whole time._ **

“I’ll miss you, too,” Eddie says. He nuzzles his face against Venom’s. “Have fun scaring 5-year-olds. I love you.”

**_Love you. My Eddie._ **

They break apart and Eddie awkwardly clears his throat as Venom recedes back inside Dre. 

“Sorry,” Eddie says. “We’re still not really, like, great at being separated, you know.”

Dre waves him off. “You good, man. Call if you need anything, and I know you got that weird telepathy thing, so we be alright.”

Venom gives Eddie a tentacle to slide down to the street, then Eddie watches as Dre runs and jumps over roofs like it’s nothing. The first time they did a test run of Dre having Venom for a full 24 hours, Eddie had a panic attack in the middle of the night—around hour 20—and accidentally figured out that if he sent stress signals to the parts of Venom permanently fixed inside him, then Venom would get the message and return to him immediately. Eddie had been staying at Anne’s that night, and Venom had crashed into their bedroom and slammed into Eddie, unceremoniously spitting a very tired Dre out onto the floor in his pajamas. Once Eddie and Venom had calmed down, they took Dre back home. 

It got easier with time and with more surrogate hosts. In addition to Anne and Dre, they added Dre’s older sister, who was in her mid-20s and trans and nearly as close of a match as Dre himself; one of the inmates they freed, a large Mexican guy who became the face of good P.R., since he had been wrongfully accused and had been stuck in jail for a year, and had a tearful reunion on TV with his wife and three kids; and Mrs. Chen.

Eddie grabs a few snacks from Mrs. Chen’s store and is eating a bag of chips when he gets up to the register. He holds the bag up for her to scan before continuing to eat. 

“You’re getting fat, Eddie,” she says flatly. 

“Thanks, Mrs. C.” He eats more chips.

“I have a collector coming by tomorrow night. I need the alien.”

“You know it has a name, right?”

She scoffs at him. “You have your pet names for her, I have mine. Tomorrow night, 10 o’clock.”

Another thing about the surrogate hosts is that they all use different pronouns for Venom, and Eddie gave up trying to correct them because he’s not sure if Venom has “correct” pronouns. 

So far, Mrs. Chen and Anne are the only hosts that can stomach Venom eating people. Whenever Mrs. Chen asks to borrow Vee, it usually comes back to Eddie noticeably stronger than before. 

As Eddie heads out to his bike, an older guy walking toward him narrows his eyes at him. Eddie gives him a tightlipped smile and tries to move past him, but the guy blocks his path.

“You’re that damn reporter,” he says in a low tone.

“Yep,” Eddie replies, keeping his head down.

“Fuck you, man. Spreading your propaganda and shit.” He leans closer into Eddie’s personal space. “Fucking freak. I should kick your ass.”

Eddie maneuvers toward the door. “That’s fine. Uh, I’m just gonna…”

The guy puts a hand to Eddie’s chest. “Goddamn cannibal. No goddamn respect for the law. Causing chaos and anarchy in my city. What are you gonna do, you gonna eat me?”

Eddie looks down at the hand on his chest and then up at the guy’s face. He digs in his back pocket and holds up a business card between his index and middle fingers. “Complaints can be made to my manager. I’ll be going now.”

As the guy makes a confused face at the business card, Eddie wraps a tentacle around the hand on his chest and pulls it away from his body just enough for him to get out the door. The guy flinches and jumps back but somehow manages to take the business card.

**VENOM**

MANAGER

YOU CAN’T CALL ME, BUT YOU **CAN** EAT MY ASS.

Once he gets past the guy, Eddie heads downtown to meet up with his very small crew that helps him with his show. Streaming on YouTube, he actually makes more money than he ever did on a network, so he’s able to pay his staff out of his own pocket. 

They set up on a street corner with a protest in the background and before Eddie can get through his intro, several people come up to him wanting to be interviewed by the famous alienfucker Eddie Brock.

After a few somewhat useful interviews, Eddie steps away from the crowd and looks at the camera. 

“We’re coming up on two straight months of protests,” he says. He looks down at the notepad in his hand and then back up at the camera. “There are several ongoing investigations into the San Francisco Police Department, and yet they are still maintaining a curfew. When the sun goes down, they bring out the batons and tear gas. They knocked a young man unconscious just yesterday. He’s still in the hospital. The National Guard is here as well, and even though Venom confiscates and destroys the military-grade weapons every time the officers hurt someone, they continue to hurt people. Because they have an over-inflated budget, they’ll just keep receiving more weapons and equipment. Venom is aware that it probably needs a new strategy, but it’s just one monster, so.” He shrugs. 

They walk around a little bit, get some shots of protesters, do more interviews. 

Eddie walks past a line of cops in riot gear, all of them standing perfectly still, as he says to the camera, “The police department has completely stopped using symbiote injections, as 12 of the hybrid cops have passed away from heart failure, strokes, and sudden lung or kidney failure. Four others are in critical condition with permanent brain damage, and the rest have mild symptoms and have been fired from the SFPD.” 

He stops, his back to the line of cops. “Dr. Dora Skirth leads a team of scientists that are working on developing symbiote matter to heal a number of diseases. Symbiotes require a suitable host to thrive, and with a suitable host a symbiote can heal and strengthen a human body through means that we don’t quite understand yet. For example.”

Eddie pulls a knife out of his pocket and opens it, causing three of the cops behind him to flinch and place hands at their hips. Eddie holds up his left hand and slices a deep cut across his palm, letting the blood flow for the camera before he brings Venom’s biomass to his fingertips and dramatically weaves it over his cut to stitch the skin back together. 

The cops relax.

“See?” Eddie says with a smile. “If Dr. Skirth can figure out how to channel that healing power into a medicine that anyone can take, whether they’re a suitable host or not, then the possibilities are nearly endless.”

Eddie continues walking and talking to the camera, turning a corner and distancing himself from the police. His cameraman moves the camera away from him suddenly, pointing it up and to the left, so Eddie turns in time to see Venom swinging down to greet him. It lands next to Eddie with a thud and smiles with all its teeth at the camera. 

“Hey, Vee,” Eddie says. He affectionately strokes his hand up and down Vee’s arm. “Say hi to the camera, sweetheart.”

 ** _"Hi."_ ** Venom licks the side of Eddie’s face then squeezes him in a sideways hug. **_"_** ** _You’re doing a good job. My Eddie."_**

Eddie laughs and pulls it down to kiss its cheek. “Alright, I’ll see you later.”

It smacks his ass before taking off. 

“I’m Eddie Brock, and you’re watching The Brock Report.”

Back at his apartment, Eddie keeps working, going over his producer’s edits while Rage sleeps in his lap. Dre texts him to let him know he passed Venom off to Anne, then he sends him several pictures of Venom doing various tricks with its limbs and its tongue while a group of kindergarteners looks on in horror and wonder. Eddie smiles at the pictures for a long time.

While he heats up some leftovers for dinner, Eddie texts Solomon to set up an interview time for later in the week. After the exposé on the SFPD came out, Solomon became more involved with the civil rights group that published the piece, and he wrote an article about being unfairly targeted by the SFPD himself. He avoided mentioning that he witnessed Venom eat three cops. 

Solomon texts back, _"_ _Sure, Wednesday or Thursday afternoon would be good. I can come by your apartment. Can you pass the monster off to somebody else?"_

 _"Yeah,"_ Eddie texts. _"_ _It still hurts V’s feelings that you don’t like being around it, but it’ll just have to cope."_

_"Oh I’m sorry I’m a little bit wary after I watched your alien eat people whole!"_

Before Eddie can respond, Sol texts again, _"_ _And just because I’m coming to your apartment doesn’t mean you’re allowed to try to seduce me. I refuse to be added to your rotating list of lovers."_

Eddie replies, _"_ _Oh my god I’m never telling Marie anything ever again."_

It’s late by the time Eddie’s done working. He feeds Rage then takes his bike over to Anne’s. 

He finds her asleep on the couch with tentacles draped lackadaisically over her. In an attempt not to wake her, Eddie touches the tip of a tentacle and slowly pulls Venom back into his own body. Venom barely wakes up during the process, its mass like sludge as it groggily creeps through Eddie’s bloodstream.

 **_Hi,_ **Venom says.

_Hi, sweetheart._

Anne stirs awake right as the last bit of Venom retreats inside Eddie.

“Oh, hey,” she says.

“C’mon, come to bed,” Eddie whispers, reaching down for her hand.

Anne lets him lead her all the way to bed. On nights that Dan works late, which is usually at least one or two days per week, Eddie and Venom sleep with Anne in the guest room. And on nights when Dan has a particularly bad shift, he joins them in the early morning, holding Anne in his arms and coaxing big, soft tentacles out of Eddie to wrap around him like a comfort blanket. Eddie always keeps his hands to himself but enjoys the intimacy anyway.

Once they’re in bed, Anne wraps an arm around Eddie’s middle, spooning him and nuzzling her face against the hair at the nape of his neck.

“You’ve gotten so soft,” she mumbles with a pat to his belly.

“Good god, not you, too.” He puts his hand on top of hers and links their fingers together. “It’s Vee’s problem, not mine.”

“Hey, I’m not judging. It’s still _your_ body, though. You have agency here.”

“I know that,” he says defensively. “I know. I think it’s actually good for me to be apart from ‘em every so often, you know, to remind me that I’m—I’m my own person or whatever.”

Venom moves like a shiver through Eddie’s clavicle and up around the shell of his ear. So only Eddie can hear, it says, **_I love how you feel when I come back to you. It's like I have to learn your body all over again, and I'm reminded of who you are on your own and how much I love who you are, Eddie Brock, my human._**

Eddie closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, drinking in the praise. 

Anne yawns. “You didn’t want to have sex, did you? Vee and I fucked before you got here. That’s why we were passed out on the couch. Sorry.”

“Oh no, I’m alright." Eddie clears his throat and wipes a tear from the corner of his eye. "We stayed at Jo’s last night, and honestly, between you and her I’m getting kind of tired.”

 **_Did you go home to feed my cat?_ **Venom interjects.

“Of course, baby.”

“It’s nice though, isn’t it? Sharing Vee?” Anne asks.

Eddie squeezes her hand. “Yeah.” On impulse, he flips over to face her, resting his hand on her hip and inching forward to give her a kiss. 

She sighs into his mouth and puts a hand on his cheek. She whispers, “I love you.”

He kisses her again. “I love you, too.”

The next morning, Eddie and Venom wake up after Anne has already left for work. She left a mug of coffee on the nightstand for him, but it’s too cold to drink. He curls up on his side and tries to get his phone from where it’s plugged into the wall, but it’s too far away from him to reach and he’s not awake enough to control any tentacles. Venom gets it for him, then it spreads across his back and tickles in patterns over his skin, tracing his tattoos. 

_Mm, feels good,_ Eddie says as he deletes emails.

Venom’s head materializes at Eddie’s neck. It grazes its teeth over his skin, moving down to his shoulder, sucking and biting while sliding tentacles over his abdomen and between his legs. It jerks him off slowly, making his morning wood feel painfully hard as it works around him. Eddie can feel it inside him, too, languidly rutting up against his bones to get itself off. After a few minutes, Eddie’s eyes slip shut, his body relaxes and he drops his phone to the floor. He shifts over to his back and blindly reaches for Vee, pulling its face to him to kiss it properly. 

_So, while I was working and taking care of your cat all day yesterday,_ Eddie thinks while they kiss, _you were entertaining kids at a party and then relaxing here, having sex with Annie and stuff?_

**_Yeah, my life is awesome._ **

_Hm. Yeah._

Vee kisses him harder. **_Thank you for working so hard and taking care of Rage and for being my favorite person._**

Eddie breaks the kiss so he can smile at Venom, stroking a thumb down its face as he looks up at it. He pulls it down to him so they can bump foreheads together.

_And thank you for taking such good care of me._

They rock together like they’ve got all the time in the world, Venom forming a perfect hole for Eddie to fuck, looming over him and pressing against him and inside of him with too many tendrils to count. Eddie keeps his hands tangled in the matter of Venom’s neck, twisting and pulling it like it’s hair as Venom fucks its tongue into his mouth. When Eddie comes, Venom buries its head in his neck and bites down on his collarbone, and it shudders as it squeezes itself around his cock to absorb all his come. Eddie’s hips jerk up like he’s trying to give it more. 

Even though they’re both spent, Venom keeps rutting inside Eddie's body, and Eddie keeps rolling his hips and pushing Venom down against him, squeezing his arms tight around it, yearning for it to be closer even though they are already closer than any two beings could possibly be. 

Eventually they melt together into a kind of gooey mess.

 **_I know we’re never truly apart, but spending time with others makes me extremely greedy to be with you,_ **Venom says right against Eddie’s ear.

_Yeah, me too. I could spend all day in here with you._

**_Then why don’t we?_ **

_We can’t. We have plans,_ Eddie says regretfully. 

**_Right. It’s been a while since we’ve seen Marie._ **

_Yeah, it’s definitely time for another tattoo._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing says self-indulgence like me making a character soft and chonky!!!! I really enjoyed writing this fic and am sad to say goodbye to all the OCs I accidentally created. This fic started with three very simple ideas, which were a) Venom being confused by tattoos, b) Eddie having a lot of lovers, c) Venom eating cops. I wanted to write a plot-heavy symbrock fic because, like, the movie's plot is very lame and I thought I could maybe do better lmao. I also tried something I've never done before, which was avoid time skips, and what I learned is that people sure do have to sleep a lot, you know? I was also really influenced by the books I was reading while writing this, so [here's a book rec list if you're interested.](https://tomhardysteeth.tumblr.com/post/639161560808439808/honestly-i-was-so-influenced-by-the-books-i-read)
> 
> I'm [tomhardysteeth](https://tomhardysteeth.tumblr.com/) on tumblr.
> 
> Big big thanks to my number one bitch [Jessie](https://saywhatjessie.tumblr.com/) for helping me with edits and with ideas for each chapter!!


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